I9 8 RIDING 



So one would imagine ! 



It is part of the duties of the gentleman who has for 

 several years acted as Secretary to this hunt to see that no 

 ' gap-making ' goes on. 



Fortunately (says the Master) most of our fences have wire in 

 them, but when that is not there, to prevent the horses walking 

 through fences, a thick-set, determined figure (that of Mr. Secretary) 

 may be seen at any weak place hunting-crop in hand, and it would 

 need something bolder than a gap-hunter to crawl through or 

 damage that particular spot. No gates are left open and no stock 

 interfered with when he is about, and many unfortunates have had 

 to thank him for catching their lost mounts. 



Before wire fencing became universal, horses were not 

 trained to jump ' big ; ' the result was constant breaking down of 

 post-and-rail fences, and consequent escape of cattle and horses 

 from the enclosures. The colonial settler, who certainly has 

 not emigrated for any purpose other than to make money by 

 farming, would ill brook these dilapidations, and the cost of the 

 damages, not only for broken fences, but for crops eaten, 

 trodden down, and destroyed, and for running great distances 

 to recover escaped stock and horses, was too great for a young 

 and not very numerous hunt to afford. 



Now all the horses that are broken as hunters have their 

 earliest schooling over wire, and take to it as easily as to post 

 and rails. 



Small horses, well bred, seem to take to wire jumping with 

 most success. Sometimes such a horse will jump the first 

 wire fence it sees as cleverly and carefully as any subsequent 

 one. 



The Touchstone blood is the strain which seems to run 

 through the best jumpers in New Zealand, though some first- 

 rate performers have been got by one of the Prickwillows, the 

 well-known Norfolk strain of trotters. One of these was so good 

 that a gentleman who had hunted a pack in New Zealand 

 bought the horse and took him home, but he unfortunately 

 did not survive the voyage. 



