Captain Horatio Ross 



" THERE were giants in the earth in those days " that 

 I think, no one will deny who is familiar with the 

 sporting annals of the first three decades of the nineteenth 

 century. For though in many respects the sportsmen of 

 the twentieth century are far superior to their pre- 

 decessors of eighty years ago, yet in all-round sport I 

 defy them to produce such a trio of heroes as George 

 Osbaldeston, Edward Hay ward Budd, and Horatio Ross. 

 There was no sport, except perhaps fishing, in which 

 the first-named of the three did not excel. He was 

 first-rate as a horseman, a Master of Hounds, a shot, a 

 cricketer, a boxer, a swimmer, and a billiard-player. 

 Budd as an athlete was unsurpassed. In boxing, running, 

 jumping, cricket, he was facile princeps. His weight 

 prohibited him from riding much, but he was as good a 

 judge of a horse as any man in England. With the gun, 

 whether at game or pigeons, he was in the very front 

 rank. Ross was among the first steeplechasers of his 

 day, and was a first flight man with hounds in the Shires 

 when Melton Mowbray produced some of the hardest 

 riders that ever galloped over the Leicestershire pasture?, 



