It did not appear to come within the scope of the work to enter to the same extent upon the doings of other sportsmen of Squire Forester’s time, or to dilate upon those of gentlemen who subsequently distinguished themselves. It would have required many additional pages, for instance, to have done justice to the exploits of the first Lord Forester; or to those of the present right honourable proprietor of Willey, who upon retiring from the mastership of the Belvoir hounds was presented with a massive piece of plate, representing an incident which happened in connection with the Hunt. Of both Nimrod has written in the highest terms. The names of several whose deeds the same felicitous writer has described in connection with Shropshire will occur to the reader, as Mr. Stubbs, of Beckbury; Mr. Childe, of Kinlet; Mr. Boycott, of Rudge—who succeeded Sir Bellingham Graham on his giving up the Shifnal country; Lord Wenlock; Squire Corbett, and the Squire of Halston; names which, as Colonel Apperley has very justly said, will never be forgotten by the sporting world. As the reader will perceive, I have simply acted upon the principle laid down in the “Natural History of Selborne” by the Rev. Gilbert White, who says, “If the stationary men would pay some attention to the district in which they reside, and would publish their thoughts respecting the objects that surround them, from such materials might be drawn the most complete county history.” This advice influenced me in undertaking the “Severn Valley,” and I have endeavoured to keep the same in view now, by utilising the materials, and by using the best means at command for bringing together facts such as may serve to illustrate them, and which may not be unlooked for in a work of the kind. Since the old Forest Periods, and since old Squire Forester’s day even, the manners and the customs of the nation have changed; but the old love of sport discoverable in our ancestors, and inherited more or less by them from theirs, remains as a link connecting past generations with the present. It matters not, it appears to me, whether either the writer or the reader indulges himself in such sports or not, he may be equally willing to recall the “Olden Time,” with its instances of rough and ready pluck and daring, and to listen to an old song, made by an aged pate, “Of a fine old English gentleman who had a great estate.”