A Warning From 1972

 

It has been said that all we know today about the greyhound/mountain fox is down to my research work but I think that is taking too much credit. My colleague, LM, has not only found and purchased Old fox taxidermy including the famous Colquhoun mountain fox killed circa 1835 but others.  LM has also drawn my attention to other snippets and it was LM who pointed out this children's book from the 1970s (which I find that I actually have but have not read in many years).

Not just the fox on the cover grabbed LM's attention but also a paragraph within. Therefore LM deserves credit for pointing this all out.

The book was written by John Leigh-Pemberton.  This cover was painted by John Leigh-Pemberton and were that muzzle black "tear stain" missing it would be an Old type British fox. In fact, I do wonder whether he based this on an old taxidermy he had seen as it would be right for a mid-1840s Old-New hybrid.

Note that the book was published in 1972 which is important. Now read what he had to say regarding badgers and specifically about foxes.

Who was  John Leigh-Pemberton?

Leigh-Pemberton was the great-grandson of Edward Leigh Pemberton. He was born on 18th  October 1911 and was educated at Eton; he studied art in London between 1928 and 1932. During the Second World War he was a flying instructor for the RAF and was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1945. As well as his book illustrations, Leigh-Pemberton carried out advertising work and decorated a number of ships.^[ He also did work for the Shell Guides series. However perhaps his best-known work was carried out for the Ladybird series of books for children, where he wrote and illustrated many of the series dealing with natural history subjects.

All of which means that he would have had the education and background of any gentleman of that period. He would have also been, as proven by his work, a "gentleman naturalist" and moved in the right circles to know what was going on -hunting was something the gentlemen as well as game keepers talked about and that information would build up a fairly accurate picture. 

We know that even pro hunt naturalist authors realised by the early 1960s that hunts were "fixing the numbers" of foxes to justify hunting in an increasingly anti-hunt society (even depicted in popular British films as cruel and unnecessary).  However, the depiction of only "toffs" going out to kill foxes was inaccurate and still is.

If  Leigh-Pemberton had realised in 1972 that foxes were on the decline it confirms what my own research found in the 1980s. Foxes were becoming scarcer and only a few rather brave gentlemen were willing to make that know and probably got some nasty words thrown their way. 

The downward spiral in the UK fox population likely began in the 1900s and facts prove that by the 1920s-1950s foxes were "hard sport to find".  You see, you do not have to just take my word for it.