Tim Forshaw, who is quite the "old standard" groom, then ushered in his Cape Flyaways; and how men with money in their pockets and fond of riding horses could let the Wood Nymph filly go at 60 gs. we know not. There was not such a lengthy, short-legged beauty on the ground during the week, and if she does not race she looks a 300 guinea hack, for any one who likes to be handsomely carried and talked about, and who knows the joy (which so few do) of a cheque-book. The nearly full sister from Star of India was a racehorse from heel to nostril, but the Prelude filly (40 gs.) had not the Cape Flyaway style; and for substance and quality there was nothing better than the chesnut colt (190 gs.) from Boomerang, daughter of Miss Bowe. It was quite a doubt with us whether he or the Star of India filly was most eligible. They were beautifully sent up, and, though Cape Flyaway does not get them with great size, he is as much to be relied on in his age for smart runners as in his youth for being a time-keeper at Whitewall.

Unless the race list is very strong, the interest of the meeting dies out when the third day's sales are over. The "cannons" of Argyle, and the style in which Stanley reached Torreador, inch by inch, and just nailed him on the post, were very interesting in their different ways. If Stanley is not a racer, then all belief in look and make as a guide must go. He was not heavy in flesh, but he was no doubt gross internally for lack of work, and hence the tenderness with which he was ridden. People backed Plaudit for the Portland Plate, although he was anything but fit, and a country sire is his vocation, as his good looks will take in the show yard. The Eglinton Stakes were in a measure worthy of its old repute, with Camel, Agility, and White Slave within half a length of each other. Friday's card, rotten as it once seemed, wound up pretty well with the second meeting of Pretender and Pero Gomez, the Nursery win of Camel with the top weight bar Queen of Harts, and the strange fortunes of the Tupgill Stable in the Cup; Blueskin second this time, but beating Acaster easily, though on only 2lbs. better terms than when they met in the Queen's Plate. John Scott had a wholesome fear of Crocus in the Park Hill; but Toison d'Or, who is, we believe, no great stayer, was enabled to regulate the pace for herself to the Red House, and then Fordham just pulled her through.

The Bowes yearlings go up to Whitewall next week. They consist of Field Marshal by Rataplan from Go-a-head, The Traitor (own brother to the Spy), Bon Chance by Adventurer from Auld Acquaintance, and a chesnut filly by Amsterdam from the Bird of Eve. The foals of the year are a chesnut colt by Adventurer from Auld Acquaintance, and a brown colt by the same horse from Go-a-head; a bay colt by Macaroni from Klarinska, and a bay filly by Blair Athol from Old Orange Girl. Victoria and Corybantica are barren, and both have been put to Underhand; Klarinska and Old Orange Girl to Macaroni; Auld Acquaintance to Adventurer; and Go-a-head to Rataplan. Forget-me-not has not been served.

There is not much hunting news. The staghounds have had some good things over Exmoor; and the Hon. Mr. Hill's otter-hounds have killed their sixteen brace the two last dog-otters of 26lbs. and 27lbs. weight. We do not hear that Dr. Grant (whose health is very deli

cate) has been out this season. Sandy" and the Carlisle dogs havhad a good time of it. The nine hours in and about Corby salmone coops is enough to stamp a season. The Duke of Rutland and Lord Galway are said to have very beautiful entries of young hounds. We understand that some gentlemen of the Oakley Hunt intend to purchase Mr. Stephen Pearce's sketch of the late George Beers, the huntsman, on Cognac, and present it to the family. It is a wonderful likeness of "Old George," and gives his dark, game-looking eye, to perfection. He has a very excellent inheritor of his name in Frank Beers, the huntsman to the Grafton pack, whose health, like Dick Christian's, seems very much restored. Mr. Pierce has very nearly completed his Ashdown coursing picture, and a very noble canvas it is, with marvellous likenesses-more especially some of the very small ones. The greyhound element has not the prominence which it possesses in Mr. Ansdell's Waterloo picture, to which this will be engraved as a companion. There are 56 portraits in it, but the Earl of Craven, Lord Uffington, the Hon. F. Craven, and Mr. M'George the judge are dead. The Hon. Grantly Berkeley gave Mr. Pierce one sitting, and never came again. Mr. Pierce's troubles with sitters have been untold, and yet people are generally rather anxious than otherwise to bid for posterity on canvas.

The coursers have lost an old chieftain in Will Nightingale, the excoursing judge. He loved the sport so dearly that he left directions that the representation of a greyhound should be placed upon his coffin lid and buried with him, and his wish was duly observed. He lies with the greyhound above his breast in Gisburn churchyard, not far from his old home. In his prime he was a very powerful man, able to lift any weight against Dick Chapman the Cumberland wrestling champion, to hold any team of horses together on the box seat, and to jump the Big Cut from the Engine at Aintree in his long riding-boots. There were few, in fact, more "muscular Christians," and a blow from his biceps muscle was no joke. A Newmarket courser, far bigger than himself, once put his head into a coffee-room where he was sitting, and made some insulting remark about a decision, and "Will was up in an instant, and his assailant was fain to fly and lock himself up in a bed"I'd have killed him if I could have reached him," he said; 66 no man living shall impugn my desire to do right." His gig drives during the dark winter evenings from Harewood to Kendal, with change of horses, and on, after a few hours of rest, to judge at the Lowther Meeting on the other side of Shap Fells, were very heavy work in the days before steam. Perhaps he loved Scotland best; he had a fine practice in England, but he was quite an autocrat over the Border, and judged the great meetings and matches without a rival near his throne. He would not give up the Roman Camp Meeting, even for the Waterloo Cup, and his forecast of the actual result on that occasion astounded those who heard it. Even after he had ceased to judge in the coursing field he came north regularly, and presided as judge at the Caledonian Hunt Races; and on one occasion (if our memory serves us) he gave it by "two or three inches."

room.

In England his practice was very large. He judged the first Waterloo Cup, and left off with not many breaks, when Sunbeam ran

up to King Lear. As a judge, he was prone to take a fine broad view of what dogs were doing, rather than to count up points, and if ever he saw dogs shirk he never forgave it, and carried on the prejudice the next time he judged over them. This was the only blot on his judging; but still his knowledge of the science was so fine, and his honour so unimpeachable, that the coursing world were glad to look over it, and the testimonial which the first men presented to him when he retired in 1860 showed what they thought of him. Till within the last two years he was able to join his friends at the Waterloo and the Lytham Meetings, both in the field and over the mahogany, and many a good tale he told. Ask him about what dog or course you likedyears ago—and he could tell you every point. He loved the sport passionately, and it was delightful to see him at Skibeden, when old Chloe and Charming May and the rest came over in their morning's walk for him to inspect. Of the old bitch he always said that she was perfect, if her forelegs had not been just a trifle too long to suit his critical eye. Charming May was his delight, despite the little dip in her chine, and of Cock Robin he never prophesied smooth things. He was in his bed-room when Charming May called to leave her card before going to the last Waterloo (where she was beaten in her third course by Master Macgrath, who fell twice); so he had her up to his bed side, "and gave her some good advice." As regards Master Macgrath, Mr. Nightingale always said he "never heard of a really good greyhound tumbling about so much."

He was an excellent farmer, and an admirable judge of bullocks and sheep, and in short everything, and he had the luck to get his lot of nearly one hundred sold and sent off North just before the cattleplague broke out. Everything about his house was a marvel of neatness, and so were his farm-buildings and granary. Skibeden was a bleak spot, about three miles out of Skipton, on the road to Bolton Abbey; but there was always a very kind welcome when you got there. He suffered from a spinal affection as well as sciatica; but you never heard him complain, and he contrived to get very fairly about by the aid of his stick. His gig rides seldom extended farther than Skipton, where he would meet a few of his friends on market-days at an inn kept by his sister. The last time we saw him any distance from home was at Colonel Tonweley's sale of Shorthorns in the March of '64. In many points he was a peculiar man, and of this his will is said to be a proof. The latter years of his life, his own personal affliction excepted, were very prosperous, and he had no worldly ills to contend with but sickness and his removal from active life. In height he was fully five feet eleven, and with his large limbs he could never have been much short of fourteen stone. Add a fine, kindly face, with the grey locks rather curling over his forehead, and you have the image of one who will ever be remembered as the chiefjustice of the leash. In spite of his affliction, he still looked young for his seventy years, and when you talked to him of a greyhound, his heart was as young and his voice as cheery as ever. We have lost a good and a kind friend, and there was none whose annual invite we looked for with more pleasure. His portrait is to be found in the second volume of Field and Fern.

THE PARTRIDGE.

Solicitude for their young is manifested in no creature more strongly, perhaps, than the partridge. Covered with down, the little ones run about immediately after leaving the egg, and both parents instinctively perceiving the necessity for vigilant care, share the arduous duties of attending to them, intense anxiety being displayed for their safety whilst they follow or lead them hither and thither, ever on the alert, lest danger should be nigh, and harm befal them. Combined with excessive tenderness is daring courage, for when a kite is discerned by the old birds hovering over the covey, and cries of warning and distress, mingled with screams of defiance, seem ineffectual to protect their brood, they will, on the close approach of the enemy, fly up at it, and if unable to scare it away, show fight. Mr. Selby relates an instance of two partridges, unsuccessful in mere defiance, giving battle to a ravenous carrion crow, which they contrived to hold with such pertinacity, that a person who witnessed the contest from a neighbouring field seized the crow and took it from them. But they usually resort to artifice when either man or dog come near, pretending to be wounded, fluttering, and uttering their distress, trusting by this stratagem to divert attention from the brood. Markwell mentions an instance of such feigning when out with a young pointer. A parent bird uttering cries, fluttered and ran tumbling along just before the dog's nose, till she had drawn him to a considerable distance, when taking wing she flew still further off, though not out of the field. The dog returning to him (the young birds lying all the time in the same place in the grass), she instantly flew back, and rolled and tumbled about before him again, again to draw off his attention.

White, in his charming history of Selborne, alluding to the marvellous power of instinct, says: "A hen partridge came out of a ditch, and ran along shivering with her wing, and crying out as if wounded, and unable to get from us. While the dam acted this distress, the boy who attended me saw her brood, that was small and uuable to fly, run for shelter into an old fox-earth under the bank."

A proof of the affection of the partridge for its yougg was evinced in the very cold and wet summer of 1836, when several pairs were found dead in the fields near Bathgate, with their broods under their wings, having perished from cold and hunger, rather than expose their tender progeny to the inclemency of the weather, a singular illustration of warmth being paramount to food for the nurture and sustenance of animals,

The effects of joy are so differently expressed in different people, and by different causes, that we are often led to doubt the power of its influence, or moral existence, excepting as an innate, a constitutional gift, and not a true and affecting passion, like love-to which all hearts are open, and all human_nature more or less indebted for real, though short-lived happiness. For instance, my now mother-in-law, Mrs. Jeffery, absolutely cried, overjoyed at the return of Agnes, and the success of our visit to the blacksmith at Gretna. A moment afterwards she raved with unbounded fury at the tyranny of the Colonel and the falseness of the Captain, the release from whose rule and presence was at length perfected by their complete abdication and return to Ireland. Yet, surely, these latter events should have given us as much or more occasion for delight, than did the former, for shedding tears of affection, accompanied with hysteric pleasure. But women of "a certain age," in the midst of their tenderness, must vow vengeance against somebody; it is the natural consequence of experience, so that they can scarcely ever, after mixing with the world, be said to taste unsullied the sweets of a pure and heavenly passion. Again, how often have we been amazed to see with what stoical rigidity and unruffled composure some have received good news, even of those dearest to them, which ought to have thrown them into ecstasies of gratitude and bliss, but which failed to do so, through want of kindred temperament. We have watched them as they have listened, word by word, in silence, to the heart-stirring intelligence; still not a feature has been moved, nor has an expression betrayed an acknowledgment of the slightest impression; not even the eye-that illuminating index of the heart--has brightened up, to declare the presence of that celestial blessing, joy. A convulsive giving way to feeling, whether of love or hatred, pleasure or pain, is, to say the least, disagreeable to the lookers-on; but the scene I was almost bound to witness during our early breakfast affected me, for the first time, with sensations of another character, more effective than anything I can remember. There was a selfishness throughout it that cast over my susceptibility shadows of darkness and regrets to come. Had I not made fearful sacrifices? Was I not fresh from a field of risks and dangers, and had I not re