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The Sportsman --he stands over a dormer window in the red-tiled roof of an old house of the Sheraton period, immediately opposite the famous
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Chequers Inn. The house itself is very interesting; it has evidently been, in its early days, of considerable pretension, but has been an ironmonger's shop since 1804. On going within to make inquiries about the vane, I gathered that it is at least 120 years old, probably much more, the oldest part of the house being contemporary with the
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Chequers. The vane is cut out of thick sheet copper and strengthened with stout wire in several places to keep it rigid, and the whole is painted in colours (a very unusual feature), in imitation of the costume of the period; and I was shown a curious old print of Tonbridge in the time when the well-to-do farmers wore top-hats and swallow-tailed coats, in which the vane is represented just as it appears at present. Vane number two is a much weathered and discoloured one, almost within touch, on a wooden turret surmounting the Town Hall--a typical Georgian building, lately threatened with demolition, and for the further life of which I noted a vigorous pleading in the pages of _The Graphic_ of November 4th, 1892. Number three is a fox, rudely cut out of flat metal, with a