WARWICKSHIRE 



When considered as a hunting country, Warwickshire certainly 

 ranks next to Leicestershire ; and a considerable portion of it to the 

 eastward of the river Avon is equally good. Here it is bounded by 

 Northamptonshire ; and though, perhaps, taking it throughout, 

 there may be more ploughed land in it than may be met with in 

 that county, yet it is for the most part a pleasanter and a more 

 practicable country to get over, and no man who knows how to ride 

 to hounds, and has a hunter under him, ought often to be stopped 

 in Warwickshire, which cannot be said to be the case in 

 Northamptonshire. The ploughed land in Warwickshire is chiefly 

 of that loamy nature, that, whilst from its general richness it holds 

 a good scent equal to, if not better, than some grass countries, it 

 does not, with a few exceptions, stick and stop horses as colder clay 

 land does. When we consider that the Warwickshire country 

 reaches from Hook Norton in Oxfordshire, to Newnham, the seat of 

 the Earl of Denbigh, within three or four miles of Lutterworth in 

 Leicestershire, a distance of forty miles ; and when we look at the 

 magnificent vale it is composed of, the coverts that are interspersed 

 in it, and all other advantages attending it, no unprejudiced person 

 can deny that it is as fine and as fox-hunting a country as a master 

 of hounds can reasonably desire. It not only contains a large space 

 of champaign country, which with a good fox must shew a run, but 

 on the outskirts of it, and which are only made use of for that 

 purpose, there are some of the fi.nest coverts in England for cub- 

 hunting, and which are never without foxes. Indeed a blank day in 

 Warwickshire, when fairly hunted, would not happen twice in three 

 years, which can be said of few other countries. 



It is a long time since Warwickshire has been without hounds. 

 The first pack that I can recollect in it, when I was a boy, was 



