HORSEMANSHIP. 



a larger business than ever ; Durland's Riding 

 Academy at Eighth Avenue and Sixtieth Street, 

 which has a large patronage; a very scientific 

 school is that of R. Emile, called the Boulevard 

 Riding Academy, at Sixtieth Street and Grand 

 Boulevard, directly opposite Durland's. There are 

 smaller establishments Dean's, Anthony & Sons, 

 and the Belmont beside or above the upper en- 

 trances to Central Park. In all of these schools 

 beginners are placed upon gentle horses and are 

 taught reining, balance, grip, and control. It 

 takes from half a dozen to twenty lessons for a 

 beginner to become proficient enough to venture 

 out into the park without the escort of a riding 

 master, and men who have been riding from two 

 to twenty years have said repeatedly that they do 

 not know now half as much as they thought they 

 did at the end of four lessons. Horsemanship re- 

 quires nerve and skill, and it gives health arid 

 strength, with increase of gracefulness. 



Although high jumping, which is always a 

 most interesting and exciting game, was one of 

 the competitions at the Horse Show Association's 

 exhibition, and seven feet was cleared, or rather 

 tumbled over, by the Canadian mare Maude, the 

 horseback exhibitions that excited the most genu- 

 ine and popular interest were the Haul j&cole, or 

 High School, and the mixed, utility, and fancy 

 exhibitions given by the mounted park police in 

 showing how runaways are caught and stopped. 



The exhibition of high school was between the 

 three highly trained horses, Dr. J. C. Beekman's 

 black Trakene stallion Leparello, Gen. Eckert's 

 bay gelding Partisan, and John H. Starin's roan 

 gelding Clausen. There was no competition in 

 the Garden except possibly the one in which a 

 prize was offered for the best four-in-hand driv- 

 ing by professional coachman that aroused 

 anything like the interest and caused the enthu- 

 siasm that greeted this contest of the most 

 highly trained saddle horses that man has con- 

 ceived. The decision in favor of the black stall- 

 ion was not at all popular, although the judg- 

 ment has since been approved by many expert 

 horsemen. This high-school training of superi- 

 or saddle horses, and the splendid control that 

 necessarily accompanies an exhibition of this 

 kind, will always draw applause. Think of a 

 horse trained to stand erect on his hind legs 

 when his rider raises his bridle hand and presses 

 with the calves of his legs ! A high-school 

 horse will also kneel or lie down at command, 

 and he is thoroughly in balance by the acquisi- 

 tion of the Spanish trot and the passage. Pas- 

 sage is really the Spanish trot, in which the horse 

 makes no progress. These horses can also per- 

 form the canter in place that is, they can go 

 through all the motions of the canter or gallop 

 without covering more than the ground they 

 stood on in the first place. The beauty and 

 precision of the trot and canter in place are 

 brought out most fully when the horses execute 

 these movements on a small board platform, just 

 as the skill and precision of a clog dancer are 

 best shown when he does his figures on a twelve 

 or fourteen inch marble slab. 



The mounted police drill and the competitions 

 of the mounted police at catching a runaway 

 horse with a man on his back and a runaway to 

 a wagon, were not as cleverly shown at the Na- 

 tional Horse Show's Exhibition as at that of the 



HURLING. 



421 



New York Equestrian Exhibition Company, be- 

 cause, at the latter show the mounted guards were 

 better horsed. One of the exhibitions at the Horse 

 Show almost tended to bring the mounted pa- 

 trol into contempt, because the officers, heavily 

 and clumsily horsed, were asked to capture an 

 alleged runaway on a polo pony. Such a thing 

 as this was as unreasonable as 'to expect an ox 

 to run down a deer. 



The jumping of the National Horse Show's 

 last exhibition was of a kind that will have a 

 tendency to change the rules of this competition. 

 It is probable that in the coming year's snow the 

 rules will be so amended that horses wilf not be 

 given a record if they simply tumble over the 

 high timber. They will be required to jump it 

 cleanly, without knocking down any of the bars ; 

 or else a standard jump of six feet six inches, or 

 six feet nine inches for the champion class, will 

 be adopted, and horses will not be asked to go 

 any higher. The jumping at the last horse 

 show was offensive to people whose nerves were 

 not of the very toughest. One " cropper " was 

 sustained by a professional jumper, which brought 

 the hearts of the sight-seers up into their mouths, 

 and was enough to make any of them forswear 

 future exhibitions of the kind. A young man 

 named Reilly, in taking a six foot nine inch 

 jump with Mr. Rowland's horse Ontario, sus- 

 tained a crushing fall that might easily have 

 killed him there and then, and he must certain- 

 ly be considered to have got off marvelously 

 well that he was not at least maimed for life. 

 Ontario is a strapping brown-bay gelding, and 

 he takes off sidewise, instead of straight away, a"s 

 the majority of horses do. When Ontario went 

 at the six-foot-nine obstruction,when the acci- 

 dent occurred, his hind hoofs caught on the top 

 bar as he -was going over, and he was turned 

 half-way over, so that he fell on his own neck 

 and foreshoulder, with his rider under him, 

 Reilly was carried to the stables, where he recov- 

 ered in such a surprisingly short time that he 

 was allowed to make another effort with the 

 horse, and, to the surprise and delight of the 

 10,000 spectators, he cleared the obstacle on the 

 second trial handily. See " Ring- Riding, a Col- 

 lection of Movements and Commands designed 

 for the use of Riding Schools and Riding Clubs." 

 By Henry W. Struss (New York, 1891). 



HURLING, a national game in Ireland, now 

 being played in the United States. The Gaelic 

 Athletic Association of Ireland consists of 1,700 

 hurling clubs, each one of which must have at 

 least 21 active players. Matches are played in 

 every county between Feb. 1 and April 20. A 

 tournament for all Ireland takes place between 

 April 25 and May 25. The only clubs eligible 

 are those that have won the championships of 

 the several counties. There are more than 85,000 

 active members in the 1,700 clubs; but this 

 number does not include many other thousands 

 who are not expert enough to belong to the 

 clubs. Hurling takes its name from the hurley, 

 a wooden implement something like a hockey 

 stick, but heavier and broader. The hurley may 

 be of any kind of wood. The ball is of woolen 

 thread and cork and has a leather covering. The 

 regulation size is from 4 to 5 inches in diame- 

 ter, and the weight from 7 to 10 ounces. The 

 hurling field is laid out something like a foot- 



