422 The Hunting Countries of England. 



THE NORTH HEREFORDSHIRE.* 



Much excellent foxhunting is enacted all along tlie 

 border of Wales — and even as far up the sides of its 

 rugged mountains as is by any means practicable. 

 Herefordsbire is a county of apples and bullocks, 

 hops and cereals. Orchards and meadows, hop 

 gardens and cornfields succeed and intermingle with 

 each other in curious confusion ; and the hound 

 throws his note among them all, every time he leaves 

 covert on a scent. Herefordshire is cultivated as 

 carefully, as miscellaneously, and almost on as minia- 

 ture a scale, as a poor-allotment garden. The same 

 red clay apparently serves equally well for all 

 purposes. Doubtless it has its degrees of virtue, or 

 why should the grazier often be called upon for four 

 pounds rent per acre, the tiller of the soil but twenty- 

 five shillings for his oatland, while the cider maker 

 pays heavily for his orchard, and the hop grower a 

 fancy price for a snug corner ? But, for all that, each 



* Vide Stanford's " Hunting Map," Sheet 14. Hobson's 

 Foxhunting Atlas has a patent, and therefore unimportant, 

 misprint in entitling the country in question the South Here- 

 fordshire. 



