A GLANCE AT ENGLISH PACKS 145 



or two of harehounds would have been an absolute 

 necessity of existence ! 



Berkshire is another county in the South of Eng- 

 land which is, though it assuredly ought not to be, 

 innocent of the merry harrier. This used not to 

 be a reproach to Berkshire, and one hopes that hare- 

 hunting may, ere long, reappear in the royal county. 

 Passing to Wiltshire, one finds only one pack of 

 harriers hunting in this large county. This is the 

 Netheravon, consisting of twelve couples of eighteen- 

 inch pure harriers — entered in the Stud-book — kennelled 

 at Netheravon, near Salisbury. This is a private pack, 

 owned and hunted by Mr. A. E. Hussey, who established 

 it in 1899. The Netheravon hunt over the country 

 of the Tedworth foxhounds, consisting of about half 

 pasture, the remainder plough, with a very small 

 percentage of woodland. It is a pleasing fact to 

 record that there is no wire in this excellent territory. 



We now come to the two great Western counties ; 

 I mean Somerset and Devon, which may be looked 

 upon, with Kent and Sussex, as the chief strongholds 

 of harriers and hare-hunting south of the Trent. 

 Somerset, with nine packs, does very well, though the 

 old English harrier is not so much in evidence there 

 as it used to be. The Bath and County pack, with 

 kennels at Claverton, muster twenty-one couples of 

 Stud-book harriers (twenty-inch), hunting two days 

 a week. They hunt a very nice country, two-thirds 

 of it grass, the remainder plough, in a district lying 

 east of Bath, in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and 

 Wiltshire, most of it within the limits of the Duke of 

 Beaufort's territory. The Cotley is a fine, old-fashioned 

 pack of pure English harriers, which have been in the 

 families of Deane and Eames for more than a hundred 

 years. Mr. Edward Eames, of Broad Oak, near Chard, 



K 



