158 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



I 



CHAPTEK VIII 



THE FOREST 



Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon, aut Mitylenen, 

 Aut Epheson — 



or Wokingham or Gerrard's Cross, but every Tuesday and 

 Friday in October the Queen's Hounds meet on Ascot Heath 

 at ten o'clock^not the Ascot Heath of Sir F. Grant's well- 

 known picture, but on the grass immediately in front of 

 the Royal Hotel. A brass band discourses here during the 

 race week, but the hounds and hunt-servants look much 

 nicer there than the band-stand. The field is small, uncon- 

 ventionally dressed, and uncertainly mounted. The hunt- 

 servants wear their oldest coats, and, in my time at all 

 events, did not ride their most precious horses. 



The deer cart is sent either to Red Lodge, Gravel Hill, 

 or South Hill Gate, which are within a couple of miles of 

 Ascot. The First Whip rides on to uncart, and, after giving 

 him (the Whip) a few minutes' law, hounds move off and 

 are laid on in the . usual way. Unless we were fortunate 

 enough to have harboured an outlying deer, this accurately 

 describes the routine preliminaries of a day's forest hunting. 



Anybody who has hunted with many different packs of 

 hounds must have observed that every hunt enjoys some 

 native characteristic of its own which the stranger is invited 

 to notice. There will always be something or other which 

 the country claims as a more or less satisfactory distinction. 



