3-047-011 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The hunting season: earth-stopping, 1872. 'In the work of constructing his domestic abode [the fox] is careful to provide several galleries or chambers, with two or three outlets by which he may escape when the place is attacked. He seems to have a good idea of fortification, taking advantage of a large stone or the roots of a tree, which cannot easily be removed by the spade, to give his underground passages an awkward turn, that their farthest recesses may be the more secure from hostile approach. But the gamekeeper and the huntsman, who serve the sporting pleasures of the English gentry, are well acquainted with the ways of Master Reynard. They look after him, from day to day, till they know the hour and place where he lies basking in a covert of bushes not far distant from his burrow...The men are prepared that instant with spade and mattock to shut him out of his own house, so that he may be found roaming at large next day, when his scent will lie strong over the fields of his disconsolate wanderings. Then, as the hunt comes up, and thirty couple of keen fox-hounds will soon be loudly and swiftly following bis track, it is high time for Reynard to bid a long and last farewell to the home that men have closed against him'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.