1 6 HORSEMANSHIP. 



When the purchaser desires to invest in a horse to both 

 hack and hunt, he must content himself ^\ith something less 

 showy, of more decided points, and more of the general- 

 purpose type. The breeding may be as high, in fact in our 

 grass counties, with their big-acre fields, large fences, and 

 racing packs of hounds, blood is a sine qua non. The fifteen 

 hands horse will carry his rider brilliantly in a small cramped 

 countr}^, or over the high banks and steep hills of Wales 

 or West of England, where one verging on sixteen, with his 

 scope and stride would come to grief; or would, better than 

 his big brother, rattle up and down the Surrey and Sussex 

 slopes and downs. But if a man means to keep with hounds 

 over " the Turkey carpet " of Great Britain — Leicestershire 

 — and to take those ready-made graves, those bull-finchers, 

 oxers, and other big obstacles in his stride, then he must 

 have not only a high-bred, but a fifteen-three horse under 

 him. 



There are, as I have said, many counties in which the 

 pocket Hercules will force the galloper whose name figures 

 in the Stud Book, to strike his flag; but for "the Siiires," 

 there must be height with scope, and especially so if the 

 owner desires to find a purchaser. One of the best hunters 

 that ever looked through a bridle was the famous "Jack 

 Russell's" equally famous pony, "Billy," the produce of 

 a two-year-old grass colt, a grandson of "Eclipse" and an 

 Exmoor pony mare. But Dartmoor is not the ^Midlands, 

 and though the clerical Nimrod's, nndtum in parvo, could 

 gallop all day over those hea^7 moorlands, and jump boun- 

 dary fences big enough to stop anything but the wild stag, 

 he would not have shone in the Shires. Like the blood 

 hack, the hunter should be faultless in front of the saddle. 

 When a happy medium between the two is aimed at, the 

 rounded beauty must give place to a deeper girth, still 



