viii REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



My Life and Recollections, 4 vols. . . . 1865-6 



Anecdotes of the Upper Ten Thousand, their Legends 



and Lives ...... 1867 



. Tales of Life and Death, 2 vols. .... 1870 



A Pamphlet on the French and Prussian War . . 1871 



Fact against Fiction, 2 vols. .... 1874 



Of these works the Reminiscences of a Huntsman remains of 

 most interest, and, though not without defects, has sufficient 

 merit and has become sufficiently scarce, to deserve a place in 

 the Sportsman's Library. The frank egoism of the author will 

 amuse, it is to be hoped, without deterring, the reader. 



Fifty years ago the discipline administered to horses, and 

 especially to hounds, was far more severe than it is at the 

 present day, and Berkeley shows himself in advance of the harsh 

 practices prevalent in the field at that time by his earnest 

 advocacy of more humane treatment (pp. xiii.-xv.). It is inter- 

 esting, therefore, to find him resisting the proposal for legisla- 

 tion, which has since been earned through, prohibiting the 

 use of dogs as beasts of draught. The fact is that, properly 

 harnessed, so that no weight rests on his back, a dog is perfectly 

 well fitted to draw a barrow without undue distress. No doubt 

 many of them used to be overworked, just as some are over- 

 worked in Germany at the present day, and as many ponies 

 and donkeys now are overworked in London and elsewhere, but, 

 under proper regulations, there seems to be no valid reason why 

 dogs should not work for their living in this country as they do 

 in other lands. 



Grantley Berkeley lived in an age when, in the hunting 

 field, as in many other scenes of activity, the old order was 

 changing, yielding place to new. His father had hunted a 

 tract of country extending from Kensington Gardens on the 

 east to the suburbs of Bristol on the west ; the altered circum- 

 stances which gradually convinced Berkeley that the Harrow 



