The Queen's Hounds. By Lord Ribblesdale. (Longmans and Co. 25s.)—No
one has a better right to be the historian of the-Queen's Hounds than Lord Ribblesdale. • He held office as Master of the Buckhounds from 1892 to 1895 under somewhat peculiar circum- stances. When Mr. Gladstone came into power in 1892, the "great difficulty," to quote Horace Walpole, "was the Master of the Horse." But the difficulty was changed in kind. In 1760 it lay in the multitude of claimants ; in 1892 it lay in their paucity. " Mr. Gladstone had more places than Peers." There was a powerful agitation for abolition, and Lord Ribblesdale took office under an understanding that the office was somehow to close. However, it survived, and Lord Ribblesdale does not conceal his satisfaction that it did so, and frankly owns that, if the vicissi- tudes of politics gave him the chance, he would gladly hunt the Queen's Hounds for another three years." "I would not say this," he goes on, " if I thought it cruel." However, the question of cruelty is not for these columns. As a book this is distinctly satisfactory. Mr. Edward Burrows furnishes an introduction on the Brocas family. The name is found in various localities near Eton, notably in Brocas Lane and Brocas Clump. , It belonged to a Gascon family which came over, not as has been fabled, with the Conqueror, but by invitation of Edward IL The name, and, indeed, the family, still exist in their original habitat. Here the Brocases held office for some two centuries and a half. It went with "Hunter's Manor" in Little Weldon, North Haute. The first Brocas succeeded in right of his wife, Mary de Borhunte. Seven of the name held it down to 1612. In 1633 Thomas Brocas sold the Manor to Sir Lewis Watson. The annals of the stag- hunting itself begin with the Georges. The first two of the name, however, did not much care about it; the third was a real sportsman. The real hero of Lord Ribblesdale's book is Charles Davis, who was Huntsman for many years. He resigned in 1866, and died the following year aged seventy-eight. Nature clearly intended him for a rider, for though he was 6 ft. 1 in. in height, he weighed little more than nine atone. There are chapters on "Deer," " Hounds," " The Harrow Country," "The Forest," and other cognate subjects. For literary merit The Queen's Hounds should rank high in sporting literature. We may suggest that the run which Xenophon describes was at Scyllus, rather than in Attica. Attic hares must have been wiped out after 431.
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