Croft goes on, after telling me about George III. and Davis in the cloisters:

'Davis's best time was before mine, but he was very good in my younger days. He left much in his latter days to his men, but he was always near enough to see what was going on. His hounds in the forest were as perfect in close hunting as harriers. They were left to depend on themselves, and so required but little assistance. "Let them alone," was his word to his whips at check. I never heard Davis say anything about a bad scent; he told me he would rather have a third-rate scent for his hounds, as the pace was then quite fast enough for pleasure, as the pack would have to fling round occasionally and give you a chance to be nearer to them. The Bracknell country was very difficult to get over in former times-hedgerows very broad, and ditches wide and blind, much overgrown with grass and brambles. Davis had his field under good control, and he never minced the matter if he saw any man riding unfairly. His language was strong, and not always parliamentary, but was most effective at the time, and I have heard lasted into the future. If his temper was hasty, it was soon over and forgotten. He was a perfect gentleman in appearance, manner, and conversation, well educated, and I should say of good ability.

These hounds [the Queen's], as you know, from the first were fox-hounds. I believe he bred from the best of his own and others, but he managed somehow to make them peculiarly his own, so much finer and more racy-looking than even the foxhounds of the present day. Getting them faster began, I dare say, when the King told him to make them fast enough to run away from the field. This most certainly he did, for they ran away from the field on several occasions in the Harrow country, and I have experience of their doing this in the Bracknell country. Davis was a fine horseman, with a most perfect seat. It was rare when going fast to see him sit down in his saddle, but his position standing in his stirrups was very fine, not to be equalled.

As a huntsman he was all that could be. Hunting the carted deer is not a science, but requires a system. His hounds appeared to love him, and one of the prettiest parts of the day was, when a check occurred, to see them fly to his call and all the pack cluster round his horse, and he take them to a holloa and plant them on the line of scent. I think this control was due in a great measure to his system of entering the young hounds in the forest in October. The deer were nearly always taken without

injury, and many were hunted for years, and knew how to take care of themselves.

Mr. Cordery first knew Charles Davis in 1835. He used to see him out with Sir John Cope's fox-hounds, and also with the buckhounds. I thought him,' he writes, as good as anyone I ever saw on a saddle. Used to ride over a country very easy and never seemed to distress his horse, he liked a clean well bred horse and was Master of him and his men and his field, and his hounds. Respected by everyone his word was Law his hounds he loved and woe be to the man who rode over one. I used to go to Swinley Paddocks 50 years ago and castrate the deer to make them haviers for hunting the next season. George Cottrell was deer Keeper and feeder, his Father and Mother before him for I think over 60 years. Used to meet all the men from the Kennels. We used to spend a happy afternoon at the Paddocks, Cottrell used to provide cold gammon of Bacon good Bread and Cheese 9 gallons of nice Ale, Pipes tobacco Sing Song home at 6 o'clock.'

Mr. Cordery goes on: Mr. Davis' hounds not quite so high as yours. Bitches very neat and smaller I think. Perhaps your present pack goes a little faster than they did that is because the country is so much more open now. There used to be 5 fences then for one now in Berkshire and Woodlands of Hampshire that kept hounds and deer slower at that time on account of so much fencing. Deer ran straight as there was nothing to head him. If you had a good Woodland hunter and fencer you could keep with them in those small fields much easier than you can in the large fields. Aldershot Common all open at that time. Wellington College and Broad Moor the only 2 houses on each of these Commors, you could see Hounds a mile off; have been hunting all day and only have seen a man snipe shooting. Very open and wild at that time, much troubled with bogs where there were no rides. Mr. Davis did not ride fast at his fences. Good trot or canter and he would ease his horse to. I don't think the Deer stouter then than now but hounds did not press them so much at first in the small fields as they do now in the open ones.'

Catching your own again,' as some one called hunting the carted deer, lacks the inevitableness we prize in wilder sports of the field. All concerned know only too well, not perhaps quite what will happen, but what is meant to happen. Upon the other hand the master and huntservants of a stag-hunting establishment-I speak from some experience-are always on the edge of novel and often ridiculous incidents.

Some people, however, seem able to invest the most untoward circumstances with their personal prestige. A few of this sort should be kept for stag-hunting. Mr. Davis appears to have been one of these gifted personages. It is true that he hunted a very much better country, and that in other ways, which I shall refer to elsewhere, he enjoyed substantial advantages which no Queen's Huntsman since his retirement has enjoyed or can hope to enjoy. Yet it would be impossible to suppose for a moment that Mr. Davis can have hunted the buckhounds for the forty odd years he carried the horn without having to put up with his share of the tiresome things which attend upon stag-hunting, and which it is sometimes difficult to suffer gladly. He must have been familiar as we are now with the good-natured but irresponsible foot people, with the deer which runs up and down the first fence, with the gentlemen who ride the deer, over-ride the hounds, or ride over other gentlemen. He must have experienced, just as we do now, the dreadful cavalcade up the main street of a small county town or country village, the deer lobbing at a slow pace in the middle of the turnpike, or eyeing the shop windows; the hounds adapting themselves to the circumstances of some back yard and the loud-cracking thongs. He must have disliked, just as we do now, the gardens and premises, the drying yards and building sites which some deer select in preference to the finest champaign country or the shaggiest heaths. But I feel that Mr. Davis was able to cover all these things with a decorum as majestic as his neckcloths. Thus when we read of his lying in a Vale of Aylesbury ditch, after a run which for pace beggars description, with his arm round Richmond Trump's neck—a position full of restless discomfort to both parties—there is something chivalrous and romantic about it all which redounds to the credit of both Mr. Davis and the gallant Trump. Pictorially it is all but a subject for Sir E. Burne-Jones rather than for Caldecott or Leech. It is related that on one festive occasion he was drawn' at the White Hart at Aylesbury. No subaltern or undergraduate could have barricaded the door in quicker time with the washhand-stand and the chest of drawers. But we may be certain he stood the siege with the air of a knight of the Round Table, and I have no doubt that Mr. Davis could direct the operations of a whipper-in in a punt without the slightest sacrifice of dignity.

Mr. Bowen May, who began his stag-hunting with Lord Maryborough when William IV. was King, and who still notes with an observant eye all that belongs to his favourite pursuit, agrees with Mr. Cordery that the deer now are as good but no better