GEORGE TEMPLER OF STOVER 31 



his " Farewell," there was not a dry eye among all 

 the company of stalwart sportsmen there assembled. 



The original old horn is now in the possession of 

 Captain J. G. E. Templer of Lindridge, to whom it 

 passed on the death, only some two years ago, of 

 George Templer's last surviving daughter. As will 

 be seen from the frontispiece, it was of the old bugle 

 pattern which, with the curved or crescent-shaped 

 horn, had in most places been supplanted by the 

 straight horn before the year 1826. It seems to 

 have taken about half a century to complete the 

 change, for, while the old pattern was used by 

 Templer up to 1826, the straight horn was known 

 to Beckford, whose allusion^ to it appears to imply 

 that it was not an entire novelty at the time he 

 wrote (1781). Indeed, the process of evolution 

 towards the present straight type may have taken 

 even longer, unless Blaine ^ was very far behind the 

 times. Speaking of the desirability of a huntsman 

 being good on the horn, he says : " We do not mean 

 the straight horn of Mr. Beckford, but the true fox- 

 hunting bugle . . ." and the passage is illustrated 

 by a woodcut representing a curved or crescent- 

 shaped horn suspended from a cord or baldrick.^ 



Mr. Templer married a daughter of Sir John 

 Kennaway, Bart., of Escot, Devon. Mr. Reginald 

 Templer told me that his death was the result of an 

 injury in the hunting-field. He was taken first to 

 the hospital at Ne\\i:on Abbot, or to the building 

 that then did duty as such, and thence to Sandford 



1 Thoughts on Hunting, Letter VI. And see Daniel's Rural Sports, 

 1801-2. 



* Encyclopcedia of Rural Sports. 1840. 



^ An excellent article on Hunting-herns Ancient and Modern from 

 the well-known pen of Mr. H. A. Bryden appeared in the Field of 11th 

 October, 1913. 



