NOTES AND QUERIES. 405 



cost of the nation. With such sentiments we venture to approach your 

 Lordship on what we regard as an important subject. As it is now fully 

 understood that the abolition of the Royal Buckhounds is a question for 

 her Majesty's Ministers to deal with, we earnestly hope that the Govern- 

 ment, of which your Lordship is the head, will take action in doing away 

 with the establishment, or converting it into a national drag hunt." 



The letter bears the signature of the following gentlemen : — The Lord 

 Archbishop-Designate of Canterbury, Dr. Kitchin (Dean of Durham), Dr. 

 Stephens (Dean of Winchester), Mr. Justin MacCarthy, M.P., Rev. Dr. 

 James (Head Master of Rugby), Lord Coleridge, Q.C., the Bishop of 

 Hereford, Sir William Wedderburn, M.P., Canon Barnett, Mr. Frederic 

 Harrison, Rev. Dr. Clifford, and Sir W. H. Flower. 



In answer to this memorial the following letters have been addressed to 

 the editor of ' The Times,' by the Earl of Coventry, Master of the Royal 

 Buckhounds, and by Mr. Henry Simpson, for twenty-five years Veterinary 

 Surgeon to the Royal Hunt. They are published in * The Times ' of 

 November 25th: — 



" Sir, — My attention has been drawn to a letter condemning in general 

 terms the cruelty which it is alleged is practised with the Queen's Hounds. 

 There are now living five ex-masters of her Majesty's Hounds— the Earls 

 of Cork and Hardwicke, Lords Colville of Culross, Suffield, and Ribbles- 

 dale. All of these gentlemen are well-known sportsmen who would never 

 have tolerated, if it had been brought to their knowledge, any act of cruelty 

 in the chase. It seems to me a matter for regret that gentlemen of high 

 position, who are not themselves sportsmen, should have signed a 

 document conveying offensive imputations which, in my experience, have 

 no foundation.— Coventry. Croome, Nov. 24." 



" Sir, — In the autumn of 1892 petitions for the abolition of her 

 Majesty's Buckhounds were presented to her Majesty, on the ground of 

 cruelty to the deer. The letter to Lord Salisbury on the same subject, just 

 published, mentions also cruelty to horses, which are alleged to be merci- 

 lessly ridden in pursuit of the deer by the hunt servants. In my report 

 this morning to Lord Coventry, the Master of Her Majesty's Buckhounds, 

 I have been able to assure his lordship that during the twenty-five years I 

 have had the honour of being veterinary surgeon to the Royal Hunt, not a 

 single case of cruelty of any kind to the horses of the establishment has 

 been brought home to any of the hunt servants, nor, indeed, has any com- 

 plaint of such ever been made to me. I am authorized and requested by 

 Lord Coventry to ask that you will be so good as to publish this fact. It is 

 unnecessary to say more to refute the charge of cruelty to the deer than to 

 remind the public that this question was thoroughly gone into in 1892. 

 After a most searching enquiry, a petition signed by 15,000 responsible 

 persons, comprising landowners, farmers, masters of hounds, and followers 

 of the Royal pack, was presented to her Majesty, praying that stag-hunting 



