The Great Grass Country
Leicestershire and its _ Hunts. By Charles Simpson, R.I. (Bodley Head. £1 I Is., also 75 signed copies, £5 5s.) Leicestershire and its _ Hunts. By Charles Simpson, R.I. (Bodley Head. £1 I Is., also 75 signed copies, £5 5s.)
To many thousands of people all over the world who are interested in fox hunting—and the number is growing yearly, not only in England, but in the United States and the Colonies as well—Leicestershire is known as the home of the sport,
and as the finest hunting country in the -world.
Nimrod aptly described it nearly a hundred years ago in his Hunting Tours : " Both nature and art have contributed to render Leicestershire the country for fox-hunting. To the
soil— favourable bitleisfoinrdehbotedminefora the ndterhanad to the latterand richness ofitsfor the
large size of its enclosures, for the practicability of its fences, for the greatest portion of its land being old pastures, and for the numerous gorse coverts made for the purpose of protecting and preserving foxes." The same conditions hold true to-day. Mr. Charles Simpson in his beautifully compiled volume on Leicestershire and its Hunts has graphically depicted, not only with his pen, but with his brush, the country hunted by the three famous picks—the Quorn, the Cottesirore and the Belvoir.
All last season on his motor bicycle Mr, Simpson was a familiar figure at nearly every one of the principal fixtures of those packs. Untiringly he would follow hounds—" over hille and dale " until they were taken home at the end of a long day ; with the result that his knowledge of the country and of hound work comes from intense observation.
That the author has been able to catch the spirit of horse, hound and countryside can be seen by anyone who glances over the many sketches with which his book is illustrated.
His power of descriptive narrative is excellent, and can be judged from the following quotation :—
" Whether one looks north-east, where Freeby Wood stands sultry and veiled in haze, or due north over the Burton Flats and the Burton Ridge, to where the central uplands of the Monday Quorn, marked by the chimneys of the Ironworks, their smoke streaming eastward, rise up from the valley of the Wreake—or beyond Old Dalby, drop down to the Vale of Belvoir and Nether Broughton—the associations they bring to mind are all of the names which they have made famous, of horse and hound, and the far winding horn."
To all those who love fox-hunting, whether they be those who know Leicestershire and have jumped its fences, or those less fortunate, whose knowledge of it is gleaned through books and pictures, Mr. Simpson's book will prove equally inter- esting, for it is a picture of Leicestershire and its hunts drawn by a sure hand.
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