A GLANCE AT ENGLISH PACKS 133 



prevailing on all sides." Few harrier packs can claim 

 to be more fortunate than Mr. Hawkins's. He has a 

 splendid and diversified country. He uses the hound- 

 van and railway very frequently, and wherever there 

 are hares to hunt he is glad to take his pack. The flat 

 pastures on the Rugby side of the Pytchley country, 

 the wooded slopes of Cottesbrook, and the wilder 

 tracts round Northampton, where plough is more 

 abundant, are often visited. Mr. Hawkins gets some 

 of his best sport, he tells me, in the fine vale along the 

 borderland of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, 

 through which runs the famous Braunston Brook. 

 Hereabouts hares are wonderfully stout, surpassing 

 in strength and endurance their fellows in the other 

 regions round about. Braunston, Staverton, and 

 Flecknoe are parishes all well known to fox-hunting 

 fame, and in these localities it is a pleasure to find 

 Mr. Hawkins and his harriers obtaining first-rate 

 sport. 



Cambridgeshire supports a pack of harriers — the 

 " Cambridgeshire " — consisting of twelve couples of 

 dwarf foxhounds, ranging from nineteen to twenty-one 

 inches, with head-quarters at Cambridge. Mr. Hugh 

 Cheape masters and hunts them. Formerly run by 

 farmers in the vicinity, these harriers are now hunted 

 by some member of the University. Their country 

 is chiefly plough, and lies within the limits of the 

 Cambridgeshire, and Newmarket and Thurlow fox- 

 hounds. The North Bucks, with kennels at Bletchley, 

 hunt in Northamptonshire, Bucks and Bedfordshire, 

 chiefly in the territories of the Whaddon Chase, Grafton, 

 Oakley, South Oxfordshire, and Hertfordshire Hunts. 

 The country is mainly grass. The pack consists of 

 eighteen couples of nineteen-inch harriers, mastered 

 and hunted by Mr. W. F. Fuller. 



