The year 1867 brings another name well known in the regiment on to the list of officers, this time not at the head of all, but at the foot of the cornets, that, namely, of John Brown, who held the adjutantcy from this time until 1878. Lieutenant-Colonel Brown (to give him his present rank) joined the Seventeenth as a band-boy in 1848. He rode the Balaclava charge as a trumpeter, and was brought to the ground close to the Russian battery, his horse’s off hind leg being carried away by a cannon shot, and his own thigh pierced by a rifle bullet. After several weeks in hospital he rejoined the regiment in the Crimea, and when the Seventeenth went out to Central India dropped the trumpet for the lance. He was one of Major White’s squadron at Barode, and from that time rose rapidly until he received his commission in 1867. For the present we need say no more than that he was Adjutant during Colonel Drury Lowe’s command of the regiment. In August 1867 the regiment was quartered at Shorncliffe and Brighton, [Sidenote: 1868.] where it remained until May 1868, when, after two months’ stay at Woolwich, it was moved in August to Hounslow and Hampton Court. [Sidenote: 1869.] In the following year an experiment was tried which proved most successful, and has now been finally adopted, viz. the “squadron organisation.” The squadron became the unit, and the word Troop was abolished--abolished, that is to say, in hope rather than in deed; for words which have the sanction of two centuries of use are not so easily expunged. When troops of cavalry first came into existence in England they were at least sixty men strong; when they were first organised by Statute they were one hundred men strong. Squadrons, again, were not compounds, but fractions of troops. Be that as it may, however, the old word Troop was for the time abolished, though not for long, and that of Squadron took its place. The establishment of cornets was, therefore, reduced by four; four troop sergeant-majors became squadron quartermaster-sergeants; four farriers were reduced and four shoeing-smiths added; and an additional sergeant (fencing instructor) was also added to the establishment. Simultaneously eight corporals and twenty-three privates were reduced, bringing down the total strength from 588 to 553, while the number of horses (a more serious matter) sank from 363 to 344. In 1869 also the white plume, which had been adopted in 1857, was done away with, and a black plume issued in its stead. The original plume of the regiment, as we have seen, was scarlet and white, but was arbitrarily altered, for all Lancer regiments alike, by King William IV., to black. The old mourning lace, adopted by John Hale, having been long since abandoned, the black plume might seem to be a means of prolonging its memory; but the prejudice of the regiment ran in favour of white (scarlet and white being apparently out of date), and after a year or two the white plume was restored.