146 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



is the present Master and huntsman. His pack numbers 

 seventeen and a half couples of twenty-one-inch hounds, 

 which hunt two days a week. Their territory lies in 

 Somerset, Devon, and Dorsetshire ; it consists of rough, 

 strongly-banked, hilly country, with a good deal of 

 downland. Wire is increasing. No foxhounds own 

 this country, and the Cotley hunt both hare and fox. 

 Hares, one is sorry to find, are decreasing, while foxes 

 are on the increase. Upon the oft-debated point 

 whether it is a good or a bad thing for harriers to hunt 

 fox occasionally I shall touch in the chapter on " Hound 

 Management." Mr. Eames tells me his is a fair scenting 

 country. Among other notes of interest, to which I 

 shall refer in later chapters, he says: " For hunting a 

 hare there is nothing like a pure harrier ; where you 

 hunt both hare and fox, an occasional dash of foxhound 

 blood is desirable, to give the pack stamina. My lot 

 are the old English harrier ; they are hard to beat for 

 nose, and they can go a good pace. I have a very 

 slight strain of foxhound in some of them now, as we 

 find foxes getting more plentiful and hares decreasing ; 

 our hill foxes take a lot of killing, and you must have 

 strong hounds to do it." It would be a pity — so it 

 seems to a harrier-man — if this good, old hare-hunting 

 pack, with its record of well over a century, should be 

 gradually transformed into a foxhound establishment. 

 I am a keen admirer of fox-hunting, and enjoy the 

 sport as much as any man ; but with one hundred and 

 sixty-six packs, we are surely well enough stocked 

 with foxhounds in England at the present day. 



The Minehead, a West Somerset pack, with kennels 

 at Minehead, consists of fifteen couples of twenty-inch 

 cross-bred harriers, and takes the field two days a week 

 under the mastership of Mr. L. E. Bligh, who carries 

 the horn. They hunt over a mixed country, chiefly 

 in the territories of the Devon and Somerset staghounds 



