lately put up an ornamental fountain in Hagley Road, in connection with
the pipe supply for that neighbourhood.

~Foxalls.~--For centuries one of the most prosperous of our local
families, having large tanneries in Digbeth as far back as 1570;
afterwards as cutlers and ironmongers down to a hundred years ago. They
were also owners of the Old Swan, the famous coaching house, and which
it is believed was the inn that Prince Rupert and his officers came to
when Thomas, the ostler, was shot, through officiously offering to take
their horses.

~Fox Hunts.~--With the exception of the annual exhibition of fox-hounds
and other sporting dogs, Birmingham has not much to do with hunting
matters, though formerly a red coat or two might often have been seen in
the outskirts riding to meets not far away. On one occasion, however, as
told the writer by one of these old inhabitants whose memories are our
historical textbooks, the inhabitants of Digbeth and Deritend were
treated to the sight of a hunt in full cry. It was a nice winter's
morning of 1806, when Mr. Reynard sought to save his brush by taking a
straight course down the Coventry Road right into town. The astonishment
of the shop-keepers may be imagined when the rush of dogs and horses
passed rattling by. Round the corner, down Bordesley High Street, past
the Crown and Church, over the bridge and away for the Shambles and Corn
Cheaping went the fox, and close to his heels followed the hounds, who
caught their prey at last near to The Board. "S.D.R.," in one of his
chatty gossips anent the old taverns of Birmingham, tells of a somewhat
similar scene from the Quinton side of the town, the bait, however,
being not a fox, but the trail-scent of a strong red herring, dragged at
his stirrup, in wicked devilry, by one of the well-known haunters of old
Joe Lindon's. Still, we _have_ had fox-hunts of our own, one of the