138 Hunting Countries of England. 



mark in its most perfect form the first essential for a 

 fox-hound in the Shires, watch the Pytchley bitches 

 slipping to the front through the mad torrent ! You 

 may learn a good deal else — not the least valuable 

 lesson being to taJce care of yourself. It is a trying, 

 but not really a rough school. And, in truth, ^tis a 

 very jolly one. Boy or man need ask for no happier 

 schooldays than this can offer. But the earlier lessons 

 should, I think, be taken young. Like tumbling or 

 tight-rope dancing, the art of riding over a grass 

 country in a crowd is more easily to be acquired while 

 the nerve is fresh and the frame has not lost its first 

 suppleness. You will scarcely hold your own in a 

 twenty minutes' burst from Misterton to Stanford 

 Hall, or in a scurry from Crick to Lilbourne, without 

 some previous practice here or in a similar sphere. 

 And if you come, middleaged and unprepared, the 

 chances are you return disgusted, and decline to tempt 

 the fates in the same direction again. 



This Wednesday, Rugby, or Western district (call 

 it which you will) is, if not absolutely the best of the 

 whole Pytchley country, as good as any. Certainly it 

 asserts itself as the most popular — the credit for 

 which may probably be ascribed to the propinquity of 

 Rugby^ — which town lies just beyond its western 

 borders, and, with Watford, Cold Ashby, Welford, 

 North Kilworth, and Lutterworth, may be taken 

 approximately to mark the outline of Wednesday's 

 arena. Small coverts, chiefly artificial, are entirely 

 the characteristic of this district — unless we can bring 

 in as an exception the Hemplow Hills, whose pre- 

 cipitous sides are covered with continuous plantation 



