44 THE TEINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



material has formed the chapter on Management, has a'continuous 

 list of Masters and Whips from 1870, and I have managed to fill up 

 the blank spaces before this as far back as to 1862. But spaces are 

 left for a Master and four Whips (should any beagler with antiquarian 

 tastes be able to disinter ancient documents) to such high and 

 far-off times as 1840, so that evidently some legend of the older 

 pack was preserved down to the time of J. S. Carr-Ellison (1888-89), 

 in whose hand the framework for records of those early days is 

 written. But the tradition is so vague, being nothing but nameless 

 hearsay, that there seems nothing for it but to accept defeat, and 

 start from the memories of the " Foot Drag,"' which begin after the 

 first interregnum in the early sixties. 



Memorandum from Charles E. G. Hoare, Esq., 

 of Newlands, Hatfield. 



" To throw back nearly half a century with my notes of those 

 times long destroyed makes any information I can give you un- 

 trustworthy for accuracy, and I have no talent to make it amusing. 



" The first beagles I knew of at Cambridge were some four or 

 five couple which my brother, E. G. Hoare, kept with old Callaby, 

 the dog-dealer, in 1864 and 1865. He used to run a drag, and, 

 except that he had two couple of blue mottled hounds, I cannot say 

 anything of them. In 1867 Mr. W. E. Currey, of Lismore Castle, 

 Ireland, then a young Don at Trinity, now, I am afraid, dead, 

 brought his pack over from Ireland, etc." 



Here we must stop, as the rest of the Memorandum deals with 

 the pack hunted by " Pat " Currey, who was the founder of the 

 Beagles as at present existing, and whose times are dealt with in 

 the chapter next following. There was an interregnum of two or 

 three years between the Foot Drag and Currey. 



A letter from Mr. Charles Hoare to his son, Mr. David Hoare, of 

 Barclay's Bank, Cambridge (a former Master of T.F.B.), throws more 

 light ou the subject. 



