enclosure on the farther side. "Come on, old dog!" called the huntsman, as the hound stopped to feather on either side of the beautiful green ride up which the two men were trotting. The keeper pulled up his cob, and pointed to a clump of beeches surrounded by low brambles and thorns, remarking, "There were three bucks there this morning." The hound, which had been casting from side to side of the walk and through the cover, now bounded towards the beeches, and with a crash. three bucks sprang to their feet, and rushed through the wood, followed by the loud and musical baying of the hound. The deer did not break at once, and there was time to join the groups in the common and watch the dispersion of the inhabitants of the plantation, as the hound twisted and turned after the bucks. A big fox stepped out, and a doe crossed, eliciting a chorus of impatient whimpers from the pack before whose eyes it passed. Then the three bucks crossed the open, followed by the single hound, whose deep voice was heard for many minutes as he drove them through the next covert. A blast on the horn now gave the signal that the deer had separated, and half a dozen willing hands led the coupled hounds to the ancient wood in which they were to be laid upon the scent. The long line of men and hounds, followed by the well-mounted field, hurried along through the long narrow glades of a most beautiful and ancient wood of oaks, or under arcades of crab-blossoms, ragged gipsies, brown-coated foresters, hounds and riders, all gradually hurrying on till the whole cavalcade was pushing at a trot through the forest. A pretty little black-eyed boy was leading old Moonstone (literally by a string). "I likes deer-hunting, though 'tis a cruel sport, for the deer does us no harm," he remarked sententiously, as the procession grouped itself round the huntsman, who was sitting alert and eager on his horse in a green ride at the highest point of the wood, where the single buck had crossed. All the hounds were now eager and happy, with heads up, sterns waving. In a few moments they were uncoupled, and dashed down through the wood. If the scene was not a reproduction of Tudor or Plantagenet days, the picture of the early poets is sadly misread. Hounds, all black, white, and tan, spread fanlike across the forest, flinging to right and left, each giving tongue as it owned the scent; master, huntsman, and whips in Lincoln green, under the lights and branching canopy of most ancient beeches; well-mounted and well-dressed riders, in the costume, sober in

colours, sound in texture, which good taste and good sense have elaborated into the perfection of simplicity, now seen, now lost, as they gallop down the glades, among the tall gray pillars of the beech-trunks, and the gossamer green of little thorns, and bushes of ivy and wild rose. Surely some such scene as this must have been in the mind of the author of the Allegro, when he bids the reader

A favourite device of a hunted stag in the New Forest is to make for the wood in which other deer are lying, and disturb them, carrying the trail right over their "forms." The difficulty of keeping hounds together when so composed in a thick extensive plantation is very great, and it often happens that, while the main body of the pack keep to the scent of the hunted deer, small parties of hounds, or even a single hound, break off and enjoy a hunt on their own account. It is on record that on one occasion the pack separated into three, each of which division killed a deer. One doe was hunted and killed by three hounds only, who were found eating the carcass. The single efforts of a staghound which is driving a deer are often extremely interesting, as an example of the perseverance, skill, and instinct combined possessed by the modern breed. On the day the opening of which has been described, a stray hound hunted a buck for a full hour without driving it from one large plantation, giving tongue at intervals, and sticking to the scent without the encouragement either of its own companion or of a single rider. At last, a fine fallow buck, which had not yet shed its horns, broke from the enclosure, and cantered lightly across the open common, ringing twice or thrice round clumps of bushes, and lying down for a few minutes to cool itself, though apparently not at all distressed, in a boggy pool. It then leapt a fence into a plantation. The hound then made its exit from the wood, and took up the scent at a swinging gallop, giving tongue loudly at first, but

soon becoming silent as it reached the scene of the buck's circle round the bushes. At least ten minutes were required to unravel these difficulties; but the check did not in the least abate the keenness of the hound, who brought the line up to the wood, and then with a fine burst of "music" dashed into the wood, and there pursued its solitary hunt.

Stag-hunting in the forest begins in August, and the meets are held through September, November, December, January, March, April, and part of May, thus covering a considerable period when fox-hunting has either ceased or not begun. Probably the late spring hunting is the most novel and picturesque experience which a day with the New Forest staghounds affords. But to those who enjoy the sight of hounds working, and at the same time have a taste for beautiful scenery, nothing could well be more delightful. Last season, sixty days' sport averaged about the same number of deer killed. Blank days are unknown, and there is the certainty of a run and of a day's enjoyment.

The New Forest ponies are one of the most interesting features both of the landscape and the life of this wild country. Now that the deer are so few as to have disappeared from common view, they are replaced on the heaths, the lawns, the bogs, and among the ancient trees by the many-coloured, wild-looking forms of these almost feral ponies. There is scarcely any portion of the forest-the inmost recesses of Mark Ash woods, the sea-girt heaths of Beaulieu, the sodden rim of Matley Bog, or the smooth lawns of Alum Green, of Stonycross, or Brockenhurstfrom which the ponies are absent. There is no solitude in which their quiet movements, as they tread with careful steps cropping the scanty herbage, do not break the stillness by day and night, no bare hillside so barren but the ponies can find on it some humble plant to crop between the stones.

The brood mares of the forest are perhaps the nearest approach to the wild horse now existing in this country, so far as their life and habits entitle them to the name. Many of these have run for twenty years in the heaths and woods, unbroken, unshod, and almost without experience of the halter except when "pounded" by the "agisters" for occasional marking. Their graceful walk and elegant shape, their sagacity and hardihood, their speed and endurance, and, not least, the independence and prosperity which their possession confers on the com

moners and borderers who live in and around the forest, give to these ponies an interest apart from that attached to the life of any other breed of domesticated animal in this country. Nearly all the work done elsewhere by large horses seems to be performed in and around the forest by these miniature ponies, drawing miniature carts. Singly, or driven tandem-fashion, they draw bricks, haul loads of brushwood and poles, trot almost any distance to markets and fairs in carts and gigs, and will carry a heavy forester safely and well

"Over hill, over dale,

Through bush, through briar,"

without fatigue or stumble. There is something in the fact of owning horses-be they only ponies-which seems to raise a man in his own esteem, and the jolly foresters have an air and demeanour, whether standing in front of their mud-built cottages, or riding across the heaths to drive in their various stock, which belongs of right to the equestrian order of mankind.

"The love of pony breeding," writes Mr. W. Moens, of Tweed, near Boldre, one of the most energetic founders of the Association for the Improvement of the Breed of New Forest Ponies, in his pamphlet on the subject," lies deep in the breasts of most commoners, not only on account of its somewhat speculative nature, but for the animals themselves. The ponies running in the forest are rarely left for long without being looked after to see how they are doing, or at least being inquired after by their owners, of those living near or working in the forest. Even the very children of borderers know to whom the mares and foals belong, so that the forest ponies afford much amusement to the forest folk, and nothing more easily excites them than a rumour that something or other is about to be done that may injure their interests as regards their pony stock. Some of the large breeders own as many as one hundred or more ponies, many forty or fifty, the smaller occupiers own as many as they can keep in the winter season. These, according to the fancy of the owners, are distributed in various parts of the forest, where they are marked by the agisters, or marksmen, by cutting the hairs of the tails in various ways. Thus the ponies haunting each quarter of the forest are known, the agister comparing his own marks with those made by the owner, and with his description of his ponies. Should any ponies