LORD FORESTER. 



There are no qualities, so far as my experience goes, 

 which are more frequently transmitted from father to 

 son than those which go to the making of the sportsman. 

 The highest intellectual gifts are but rarely hereditary, 

 and for these a man is, perhaps, oftener indebted to his 

 mother than his father. But the sporting ' strain ' is 

 essentially masculine, derived from male ancestry, and 

 apparently more susceptible of transmission from genera- 

 tion to generation than almost any other human instinct. 

 Had I the space I could enumerate instances of 

 hereditary sportsmanship — cases in which the taste for a 

 sport and the skill necessary for proficiency in it have 

 been handed down in almost unbroken succession. 



The good sportsman with whom I am immediately 

 concerned here was, at any rate, a proof of this heredity. 

 His grand-uncle was that fine old hunting Squire 

 Forester of Willey Hall, whose story, coupled with that 

 of his famous whipper-in, Tom Moody, I have already 

 told. His father was the heir of the old squire, and, as 

 Cecil Forester, was renowned through the Shires before 

 the present century was yet in its teens. He and his 

 friend Mr Childe of Kinlet, 'Flying Childe' as they 

 called him, were the two most dashing and daring horse- 

 men of their day, and initiated that practice of hard-riding 



