IN THE FIELD. 41 



field, and the consequence is that the animal is not in quite 

 such good wind as he might be. Now comes the first mistake : 

 Directly our friend catches sight of the obstacle, he says to 

 himself, " This is a big one ! " and straightway he crams his 

 hat on his head, sets his teeth, and drives his horse, as hard 

 as he can lay his legs to the ground, at it. Hurried and 

 bustled, yet with every desire to go straight, the gallant 

 steed, his head stuck uncomfortably in the air, takes off a 

 moment too soon, strikes the top of the hedge, and either 

 comes backwards into the ditch, or turns a complete somer- 

 sault, landing on his back in the next field. Now, both these 

 riders were men of undeniable courage — neither showed, nor 

 even felt, a touch of the white feather ; but the real reason 

 why the one failed where the other succeeded, is that the first 

 had courage, plus discretion, coolness, nerve — whatever you like 

 to call it; the other relied upon that which never got mortal man 

 over a big country for any length of time yet — courage alone. 



Before we have done with bad riding, let me just call 

 attention to what Messrs. Bromley Davenport and Whyte 

 Melville aptly call the "hard funker." Always in a hurry, 

 indecision yet claims him for her own. "This vacillation," 

 writes Whyte Melville, " communicates itself in electric 

 sympathy to his horse, and both go wavering down to their 

 fence without the slightest idea what they mean to do when 

 they arrive. Some ten strides off, the rider makes up his 

 mind, selecting, probably, an extremely awkward place, for no 

 courage is so desperate as that which is founded on fear. 

 Want of determination is now supplemented by excessive 

 haste, and, with incessant application of the spurs, his poor 



horse is hurried wildly at the leap Such a process, 



repeated again and again during a gallop, even of twenty 

 minutes, tells fearful!}" on wind and muscle, nor have many 

 hunters sufficient powers of endurance to carry these exacting 

 performers through a run." The gifted writer who penned 

 these lines might have added that such handling as this tells 

 not only on "wind and muscle," but also, and much more 

 fatally, on the poor animal's courage. The "hard funker" 

 may be safely trusted to ruin the finest hunter ever foaled in 

 considerably less than a season ; half a dozen runs with this 

 gentleman "up" will bre^ik any horse's heart. Nothing com- 

 municates itself sooner from rider to ridden than indecision ; 

 nothing is more fatal to successfully crossing a country. 



