JOHN ARCHER HOUBLON 37 



The season 1895-1896, which in a short two months will have waned to a 

 close, will ever be associated in the hearts of hunting men, eh! and hunting 

 women too (for is it not true that now almost as many ladies as men follow 

 the pleasures of the chase), ^5 the one, perhaps the only one in which, if they 

 have not prayed for a frost, they have at least admitted that for a week it would have 

 been a ivelcome guest. Horses have found no rest whatever, and the open 

 season has found out many a weak spot in animals hitherto credited with 

 exceptional soundness. T^Ioderation in all things, says the Preacher, and 

 moderation in hunting this season has brought its own reward, for the 

 horses that have not been overdone will not fail to take their turn as the 

 days lengthen and the work becomes harder. For it is the long days, the 

 long hours out of the stable, that kill them. 



John Archer Houblon 



Perhaps there are few families in Essex to whom fox- 

 hunters in that county are more indebted for the promotion of 

 their interests in the pastime they enjoy than the Archer 

 Houblons. The subject of our sketch, whose portrait is given 

 above, is a descendant of an old Huguenot family, one of 

 whom fled to England from Flanders in the middle ot the 

 sixteenth century to escape the persecution of the Duke of 



