has not changed, I suppose the Calcutta hounds are still newly imported every season, and that now, as then, a morning with the hunt does not always repay the hunting man for getting up in the night and driving in the dark to Dumdum or Cox's Bungalow, or wherenot. Many a one of the gilded youth of that old time has had a smarter burst with a bailiff behind him than ever he had with a jackal in front. For then the bailiff was, as Pope remarked, a mighty hunter, and his prey was man.

But we made believe some of us, preferring any apology for sport to pondering over the Baghobahar or Mahabharat in the company of a moonshi, or drawing up bills of lading with a Banyan's aid; and so we hunted con amore, and were as glad over it as we could manage. We were eminently hilarious one Christmas night on the eve of a meet at Dumdum (then the headquarters of the artillery in Bengal), when a dozen or so met in one of the gunner's quarters after mess, in view to making a night of it. We made believe that we wanted a roaring fire, and, fuel running short, some of our host's furniture was requisitioned. We caroused there by the blaze of table-top and chairlegs, and we finished up making a night of it some time in the small hours, when most of us had to get on to the roof to extinguish a fire that was burning merrily round the chimney-stack. Satisfied with this new form of house-warming, we

retired to our couches for a couple of hours' sleep before starting for the meet. One of the revellers of that Christmas night was he who, not many years afterwards, made India ring from end to end with a shout of admiration at his heroism, and caused each British heart to mourn the loss of such a soldier when he lost his life in the British cause. He it was, the gallant Willoughby, who in 1857 blew up the Delhi magazine after a defence of five hours against the mutineers.

He is gone. Lives there yet, I wonder, the man (an indigo-planter) who lent me a mount one day at Dumdum? And if he survives, has he yet fully repented the wrong he did me by that loan? I had my own hireling hunter there, a discreet animal of mature age and much experience in the art of saving himself. He was good enough for the purpose of the day, however: he could be reckoned upon to clear the sunken roadways and ditches that intersected fields and the banks raised above them; he might be depended upon to jump into, if he did not jump over, the streams that here and there occurred; and, at any rate, he was as good a goer as the hounds. But there at the meet was this planter, a hail-fellow-well-met man of deceptive appearance, in that he looked guileless as the callow chick, and with him a string of splendid walers in tip-top condition; and there were placed at the disposal of such as chose to accept the offer a dozen horses. There was nothing in this lib

erality that necessarily excited surprise or suspicion indigo - planters were known for their lavish hospitality, their open houses, and their love of sport. Who could regard this one as a Greek to be feared even when he brought gifts? I entertained no doubt of him or his stud: I chose a noble beast that looked like a flier, mounted, and rode off with the crowd, leaving my hired Rosinante to stroll back to town. Oh, what a time I had of it in that hunt! My steed was a flier, it is true, but the flight was whitherward that erratic beast inclined, and not where I would have had him go. Obviously the bit was an unknown form of torture to him, or he had a mouth of iron corresponding with a will of the same material, and when he was not occupied in running me into difficulties, amidst bamboos and so forth, he devoted all his energy (which was considerable) to bucking. Once he shot me over his head by the latter method, twice he put me down heavily by running me into timber, and it was only because time and opportunity failed that he let me off with those three spills. If at the end of that penitential ride any one had put to me the question of the courtly Chesterfield, "If man ever hunted twice?" I should have felt disposed to answer, "No man but a fool." However, nobody put this question; instead of it, I was asked by the perfidious planter whether that beast of his had carried me well. He had the effrontery to ask me this with an air of seraphic

joy and artlessness; and when I endeavoured, out of respect for his feelings, to tone down the eccentricities of his animal, blandly informed me that it had never been broken, or, as far as he knew, had a saddle on its back. Ah, they were fine, freespirited, open-hearted fellows, those Bengal planters, and (at all events this one was) generous with the ribs and necks and collar-bones of other people.

But I had not been long in Calcutta before, by a lucky chance, the joys of pig-sticking were revealed to me. If hunting the fox be the sport of kings, surely pig-sticking is the sport of kaisers— especially when the Bengal boar is the quarry. Well enough, as a substitute, is the boar of the Ganges-Kadirs, and thereaway; but he cannot gallop, and does not fight after the manner of his Bengalee congener, which goes like a greyhound for a few furlongs, when he elects to move, and dies fighting to the last, or, possibly, goes not at all, but opens the attack, and charges again and again, until, with a dozen spear-wounds in his sides, his life gives out. Splendid is the race for the first spear when the boar flies, and quick is the race when the gallant beast is young: cups are given to those who take most first spears in the Cawnpore and Meerut Kadir hunts; kudos is for him of Bengal the sole but sufficient mode of honour. But better even than the race is the fray that lasts while the boar can stand.

I have often heard the relative merits of pigsticking and hunting discussed, and verdicts delivered that this or the other was the finer sport. But when men have argued upon this point in my company, they have always failed to convince me : I am not sure that they ever succeeded in interesting me in what I have always regarded as an insoluble problem. Except that horse-riding is common to both pursuits, pig-sticking and hunting are too hopelessly unlike for qualitative analysis. In no sense can pig-sticking be regarded as a substitute for fox-hunting. Both are admirable in their way; both appeal to the sportsman with irresistible force in different fashions; and I have no doubt that both would be pursued in India if they were both practicable.

Whatever the merits of any other form of hunting, it cannot be gainsaid that pig-sticking is a noble sport. It is true that a pig does not give one such a run as may be enjoyed with the Quorn or Pytchley packs: at the best it treats one to a burst of a mile or so; it may very possibly decline running altogether. But such run as it does afford is a race of the keenest between the following spears from find to finish - a race which is not necessarily for him who is swiftest, but to that one who, with a sufficiency of speed, can most closely follow the pig in its devious way and many doublings. Pace alone may, indeed, spoil him who pants for the first spear-pace, where the horse is not in