292 The Post and the Paddock. 



nell's day. Mr. Charles Davis's grey horse Hermit, 

 whom he considers the stoutest and best hunter 

 he ever had, was by an English horse out of an 

 Arabian mare, which was hardly so handsome or so 

 good. Many would have it that Hermit was out of a 

 Trumpator mare, while others equally stoutly asserted 

 that he had a more martial origin, and was out of a 

 trumpeter's mare ! His real history is on this wise. 

 Mr. Gates, who lived at " The Hermitage," in the very 

 heart of that tangled grove of pollard and holly 

 bushes, Brookwood Stumps, near Woking, and was the 

 owner of the roan mare Miss Craven, bought a white 

 Arab mare, which had formerly carried a trumpeter, 

 on his return with a dragoon regiment from India. 

 Luckily he decided to send her to Grey Skim, who 

 then stood at Petworth, and Mr. Davis's never-to-be- 

 forgotten grey was the result. That gentleman 

 bought Hermit at six years old, in 1832, for 150 

 guineas, after he had led gallops for Mr. Gates's racers, 

 and rode him for nine seasons. He then unfortu- 

 nately broke down, after making a deep drop into a 

 lane, with hounds, and it was ascertained that he had 

 broken a small piece of the coffin bone of the near 

 front foot. 



As regards leaping, one of the cleverest things we 

 remember, was done some years since by a Belzoni- 

 bred hunter who had never been known to refuse a 

 fence before. A lad of about fifteen was riding him 

 as straight as an arrow to hounds, and put him at an 

 apparently easy bank and rails, when he suddenly 

 closed up in his stride about twenty yards from it, 

 and refused to face it. On examination, there proved 

 to be an old stone quarry on the other side ; the lad 

 thought it a good joke, but the horse lost all his 

 jumping nerve from that hour. One of the handiest 

 animals we know of, is an old bay horse of Lord 

 Galway's who seems to have the power of a cat in 

 crawling down or up any bank, and leaping any 



