HUNTING LOCALITIES 167 



entirety on a level with any country in the kingdom. 

 It is for the most part a grass country, and in this 

 respect it is better than the Atherstone or North War- 

 wickshire, but it is a country of great extent, and some 

 of the best of it is wide of Rugby. The drawback (if 

 there is any drawback to hunting in the Midlands) to 

 Rugby as a centre is that, like Market Harborough and 

 Melton Mowbray, it involves three or four subscriptions 

 to those who hunt four or five days a week. Otherwise 

 the place is a pleasant one, which gains in popularity 

 every year, and where there is perhaps a little more life 

 on non-hunting days than there is at Market Har- 

 borough or Oakham. 



For the two Warwickshire packs Leamington and 

 Warwick are very handy, and the first-named town, being 

 an inland watering-place, offers attractions which are 

 not to be found at the purely market towns. Indeed, 

 hunting men and women who do not care for the great 

 crowds, and the heavy expenses connected with hunt- 

 ing in the Shires, who have no country location of 

 their own, and are not more interested in one hunt 

 than another, but who are yet desirous of obtaining a 

 fair amount of sport, should look for winter quarters at 

 an inland watering-place, and the best of these are to 

 be found in the Western Midlands. 



Many hunting folk there are, of both sexes, who can 

 pick and choose their quarters, and who yet are hardly 

 desirous of obtaining what is generally considered to 

 be the very best sport. Some of them may be too old 

 for the flying bursts so often met with in Leicestershire 

 or Northamptonshire ; others may have been entered 

 to smaller fields and a quieter style of hunting, and 

 may be content with two or three days a week. The 

 Shires are right enough for the man or woman who 



