196 RIDING 



in England, where after Christmas you can generally see both 

 sides of a fence. 



The Master of the Ashburton Hounds says : ' I have twice 

 jumped into water-races and once into a gravel pit, fortunately 

 without much damage on either occasion, but with wire you 

 usually see where you are going to land, so that, for my own 

 part, I greatly prefer the wire fences to the great overgrown,, 

 uncut gorse hedges, ten and twelve feet high, that you have to 

 charge through, without the least idea of what you are landing 

 into, which are the principal fences in the centre of the north 

 island. Even at the end of a run, when horses get pumped, 

 though they may be careless over timber, they never take any 

 liberties with wire, always clearing it. A horse seems to have 

 a natural dread of getting into wire ; they will often baulk at it, 

 but when they do jump they do their best to get over. A man 

 has to ride carefully, of course, never rushing or flurrying 

 horses, so that they can give their whole attention to what 

 they are doing.' 



It is always advisable to lunge horses over wire for the first 

 few times ; it makes them more independent and careful, and 

 if- they get a fall they damage themselves only, and probably 

 much less, with no weight on their backs, than would have been 

 the case with a rider up. One precaution taken in New Zealand 

 is to shoe hunters with tips only, let in flush with the hoof at 

 the heel ; there have been one or two nasty tangles and falls 

 by the wire catching in the caulking of the ordinary shoe. 



Let those croakers who prophesy that the increasing use 

 of wire for fencing in England is the doom of fox-hunting, and 

 that it will soon be as much a sport of the past as wolf-hunting, 

 take heart of grace from the experience of the Master of 

 Hounds whom I have already quoted, who has publicly given 

 it as his opinion that wire fencing alone makes it possible to 

 continue hunting in a country where every farmer's first con- 

 sideration is his pocket, and where a democratic public opinion " 

 would resent any attempt of the few to enjoy sport at the 

 expense of the many. 



