66 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



sufficient, description of Market Harborough to-day. 

 It is a pleasantly situated place and a perfect picture 

 of a homelike English market-town. It has a popula- 

 tion of above 6000, and is the centre of one of the best 

 grazing districts in England. It has an excellent 

 system of drainage and a good water-supply, and, 

 although the town itself lies comparatively low, most 

 of the hunting-boxes stand in a high situation, and 

 the general healthiness of the place is above suspicion. 

 A very considerable number of hunting people have 

 made the neighbourhood their permanent home. No 

 place that I know has so many pleasant houses of 

 convenient, yet moderate, size in its immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, while there is a continual demand for land 

 suitable for building hunting-boxes. 



Market Harborough is not only a pleasant town ; 

 it is a convenient one as well. It has good shops 

 and excellent postal arrangements, not to speak of a 

 first-rate railway service to town, of which I shall 

 speak more at length presently. It is unquestionably 

 — as I shall remind my readers again — a duty to buy 

 what we can in the neighbourhood where we hunt, 

 and nowhere can this be done more easily than at 

 Market Harborough. The business people are well 

 up to the requirements of hunting folk, and you can 

 find everything you want in reason in the town or 

 its neighbourhood from a high-priced hunter to a 

 bootlace, and in the High Street you can have your 

 hair cut and talk of sport to Mr. West while he does 

 it. The fact is the business men of Harborough are 

 themselves sportsmen and they thus learn by practice 

 and observation what their customers require. I 

 must not mention names, but for saddles, forage and 

 sound liquors there are few places that beat Market 

 Harborough to-day. Thus the same visitors come 



