148 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



couples strong. The Taunton Vale have a nice country 

 of^mixed pasture and plough, which they hunt two 

 days a week. Eighteen couples of twenty-inch harriers 

 compose the pack. The Weston harriers hunt a big 

 country to themselves, untouched by foxhounds and 

 scarcely vexed even by wire. The pack consists of 

 twenty couples of twenty-inch pure harriers, kennelled 

 at Springfield, Worle. The Wells Subscription 

 harriers complete the list of Somersetshire packs. 

 These harriers consist of eighteen couples of twenty- 

 to twenty-one inch pure harriers and foxhounds, 

 kennelled at Coxley, near Wells. They hunt, two days 

 a week, a mixed country, over an area of ten miles 

 round the ancient town of Wells, the greater part of 

 it pasture land, half of it on the Mendips, where stone 

 walls are plentiful. Like the Cotley, these harriers 

 hunt fox as well as hare. The pack is mastered by 

 Mr. L. B. Beauchamp, who hunts them himself and 

 receives a subscription. 



Wherever you turn in beautiful Devon, with its 

 fourteen packs of harriers, its ancient traditions of hare- 

 hunting, and its kennels of pure English harehounds, 

 showing, so many of them, strong traces of the old 

 Southern hound blood, you are almost certain to find 

 excellent sport. I am not able to devote a fourth 

 part of the space I should like to Devon and its harriers, 

 but a brief summary may give the reader some idea 

 of the wealth of this county in old English harriers and 

 first-rate hare-hunting. I have already mentioned 

 Sir John Heathcoat Amory's pack in North Devon. 

 These, which undoubtedly show some of the purest 

 blood in England, consist of seventeen and a half 

 couples of twenty and a half-inch pure harriers — all 

 white or badger-pied — with kennels at CoUipriest, 

 Tiverton, and hunt a big country, 50 per cent, pasture, 

 35 per cent, plough, and 15 per cent, moorland. 



