jumping down a deep place into a lane. His appearance is well known to most people who look at hunting engravings, from Sir F. Grant's picture of Ascot Heath. Hermit shows a great deal of Arab-a lovely head and a bump on his forehead. He carried, as the dealers say, 'two good ends,' and was a beautifully coloured horse, with no thickness or muddle in his white and markings. When a grey horse of that glorified rocking-horse type is as good as 'Hermit' was, there is nothing to my mind so attractive or so becoming. Davis was quite aware of it. The 'Druid' noticed portraits of him on Hermit in nine positions when he went to see him at Ascot. HARRY KING THEM 三 ALL AND Charles Davis's horsemanship was as stainless as King Arthur's morals. But I imagine his riding appealed to the head rather than the heart. As we have seen, the expression on his features was severe and serious, and I cannot help thinking that his riding to hounds may have been a little wanting in geniality— perfect in form and satisfying in result-but somehow wanting in that impalpable quality which makes riding over an intricate country with certain people so amusing. In a point-to-point steeplechase Jem Mason rode Lottery over a locked gate 5 ft. 6 in. high off a newly-stoned road in preference to a hairy bullfinch at the side. I'll be hanged,' he said to his friends when they were walking over the ground, if I am going to scratch my face, for I am going to the opera to-night;' and Lottery jumped it like an antelope. There was no shadow of turning about Davis, but he would never have said that. Doubtless had it been a question of rescuing the Trump or the Miller he would have ridden over the gate, but he would have done it with the somewhat dismal zeal of a permanent official rather than the zest of a man of pleasure. I admit 5 ft. 6 in. high and the take off would make most people feel serious. Perhaps, too, Davis took himself a little seriously. The even and deserved prosperity of his career, his converse-almost identity with great personages, and the responsible authority of hist position may easily have induced a certain semi-royal aloofness. Davis, I feel confident, was never in anything like a scrape himself-this is of itself quite a misfortune—and I question whether he ever had much to do with the scrapes and shifts of others. Under the startling influence of gratitude, Tom Oliver once swore a great oath that he would fight up to his knees in blood for Jem Mason, who had won him 1007. with Trust-Me-Not, relieved him of the constant society of the bailiffs, and set him again on his rather unsteady legs. But I question whether anybody ever had occasion to enter into such savage covenants for Davis. We might have asked him to stand godfather to our firstborn or act as trustee to our marriage settlements-if in order-but we should not have written to him as Tom Oliver did to Mason, to say we were in short street and entertaining the sheriff of the county. Davis would not have known what to do. Trust-Me-Not, I am sorry to say, after distinguishing himself at Harlesden Green and one or two other meetings, broke Jem Mason's leg at Derby. But I have already exceeded the space at my present disposal, and I must finish up. For some years before his actual resignation, failing health and increasing years had led to arrangements with King by which Davis only went out hunting and remained out for his own pleasure. But in 1866 he had a bad fall and hurt his leg, and at the end of that season he asked leave to retire and went to live at Sunninghill. He died there on October 26, 1867, of bronchitis, in his seventy-ninth year. Charles Davis left no family. 'Il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire,' but within the possibilities of this unimpeachable aphorism it was manifest that his death had made a gap, and that his life had made a quite particular impression upon a considerable public. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam. Davis's was a conspicuous career, many things conspicuously English had contributed to his renown. But the distinction of his looks and ways, the elegance of his seat, the scarlet and gold of his public duties, the bold serenity of his horsemanship are not of themselves enough to account for the vitality of his prestige and tradition. All these things we admire in horse- and hound-loving England-all these things will be associated with and ornament Charles Davis's memory and profession. But there is something else of Charles Davis which I like to think lives to inspire and to encourage. There is the staidness of his private life; there is the conduct of responsible duties; there is the example he has left us of endeavour to provide things honest in the sight of all men. FINS and wings, fish and birds, water and air, each of these pairs. resembling the other, and so enabling us to study the more mysterious water creatures by what we can observe with greater ease in those that live in the air. Birds are heavy in the air, fish are light in the water; birds become light in the water and fish heavy in the air; and both pass through their own element in a way that is similar yet not the same. Fish use their tails and birds their wings as propellers, so when under water the diving bird flies with its wings, and when out of the water the flying fish. floats on its great pectoral fins, and is driven forward by the force exerted by the tail before it left the water. to A bird like the gull with slow wing strokes and its habit of sliding through the air with motionless wings helps us understand the use that a trout makes of its pectoral and ventral fins. To raise itself from the ground a gull runs along first with uplifted wings, following up the impetus thus gained by powerful downward strokes, which quickly take it to a great height when its flight can be changed to floating on outspread wings. Suspended thus in the air it is really from the weight of its body gliding down an inclined plane often at great speed. This falling force is easily directed upward by altering the angle at which the wings are set, and thus the perfection of aërial navigation depending on a heavy body and horizontal sails is attained. The tail though never used as a propeller is in constant use, acting either as a rudder or balance or as a powerful brake. The trout swims through the water with its tail. It does not |