HARRIERS AND BEAGLES 287 



who, if he exercises his powers of observation, must 

 know where hares are very strong, and where they are 

 the reverse. Many harrier men spend much of their 

 hunting lives in one country, and possibly do not see 

 many distinct packs of hounds at work. When this 

 happens the stoutness of hares will be gauged locally, 

 and a man who is accustomed to hunt hares on high- 

 lying ground at no great distance from the moors will, 

 in all probability, have a higher opinion as to the stout- 

 ness of the average hare found than the man who hunts 

 in an ordinary enclosed country where there is plenty 

 of food everywhere. Coursing men set great store by 

 the hares found on the cultivated marshy land of East 

 Lancashire, those coursed on the Clifton estate, near 

 Lytham, being especially famous. The hares found on 

 the Wiltshire Downs, in such districts as Amesbury and 

 Everleigh, have also a big reputation ; but no matter 

 where one goes the quality of hares varies in some 

 degree, and thus from one beat at a coursing meeting 

 all the hares will run like stags, while from the next 

 beat half a dozen weak hares will come forward in 

 succession. It is the case, too, that hares are greatly 

 affected by weather, many of them being weak and 

 feeble when the land is very wet. 



Those who hunt with harriers will have noticed that 

 one hare stands up for an hour or more, and covers a 

 great deal of country during that time, while perhaps 

 the next one hunted seems incapable of a big effort, 

 and is quickly accounted for. This variation in power 

 is most frequently found amongst the hares of a flat 

 enclosed country, and least frequently amongst moor- 

 edge hares, and possibly it is accounted for by the fact 

 that a hare which has its home on a hillside can always 

 find dry lying. On the whole we are inclined to think 



