MR. WASHINGTON M. G. SINGER 249 



or, rather, so much of it as was not included in the 

 loan made to the joint-masters of the Mid-Devon in 

 1897,^ was accordingly loaned for one season to Mr. 

 Morris, the then master of the Tremlett, a hunt now 

 extinct. But the arrangement was completed too 

 late in the year to be of much service to Mr. Morris, 

 and, when he retired at the end of that season, the 

 Haldon side reverted to Mr. Singer, who visited it 

 occasionally in his second season. In his third 

 season, an attempt was made to improve on this 

 arrangement, but the effort did not meet with 

 sufficient encouragement, and, consequently, during 

 the season 1904-5 the Haldon side was not hunted. 

 In the following year, Mr. Singer revived the attempt 

 and continued to put in a few days on that side in 

 each successive season. One great drawback was the 

 increasing number of wild fallow deer on and around 

 Great Haldon. They originated from deer escaped 

 from a park, whether Ugbrooke, Powderham or 

 Oxton is uncertain. They have now become so 

 numerous that last year (1915) I counted twenty- 

 three deer in one herd alone. Hounds that are quiet 

 enough in a park will oftentimes break away after 

 deer in the open, or in woodlands, and, in such a steep 

 and heavily wooded country as the Haldon side, it is 

 rarely possible for the hunt staff to get to their heads 

 to stop them. 



Nevertheless, some useful days were put in on 

 Haldon, as, for example, when the pack met at Ware 

 Cross, Kingsteignton, on the 21st December, 1905. 

 The morning fox from Kingswood provided a capital 

 thirty minutes before he went to ground in Tower 



1 See p. 230. The loan of this part of the Haldon aide terminated on Mr. 

 Spiller's retirement from the mastership of the Mid-Devon Hounds in the 

 spring of 1902. 



