442 The Hunting Countries of England, 



country for two seasons after the retirement of Major 

 Bell, who established the Tynedale pack and hunted 

 the country thirteen seasons. Since then he has 

 added the best and oldest of blood from whatever 

 direction it could be obtained. 



The East, or Stamfordham, country (except that 

 the soil is more akin to clay) is on the other hand of 

 the ordinary Northumberland type — to wit, undu- 

 lating tillage ground with a certain intermingling of 

 old grass, and fenced in the same crude untrimmed 

 fashion as prevails further north. It is not to be 

 supposed by this that the fences can be galloped 

 through for want of repair. The Northumbrians ara 

 too good farmers to allow of that. Every fence is 

 carefully mended up at once, with either fir-strips or 

 dead thorns. The latter by the way, though equally 

 efficacious in stopping the way, and much more dis- 

 agreeable, one would imagine, for either horse or 

 bullock to force his way through, are in Northumber- 

 land looked upon as betokening a much less refined 

 and intelligent soul on the part of the farmer. The 

 fir-strips, though puny-looking indeed as compared 

 to a Leicestershire ox-rail, have quite virtue enough 

 in them to turn a horse over, when, as is generally 

 the case hereabouts, he has to meet them at a walk or 

 slow trot, or finds them erected on a bank where he 

 can only reach them in a second spring. The term 

 unkempt merely refers to the growth of the hedges 

 themselves. These, partly for the sake of shelter and 

 partly because it has never become the custom of the 

 country to lay them, are allowed to grow as high and 

 ragged as they please — except in some few favoured 



