vi PREFACE. 



words of Punch., are " the fattiest men on an 'oss, and the 

 'ossiest men on fut." The proportion of Enghshmen and 

 Englishwomen, of the upper and middle classes, who have 

 any practical knowledge of horses and their management, 

 in and out of the stable, is really very small. MiHtary 

 statistics show that the lower strata of society are not any 

 better acquainted with the noble animal, for out of the 

 seven hundred recruits, who last year joined one of our 

 principal cavalry depots, only one individual had ever, prior 

 to taking the Queen's shiUing, ridden a horse. 



That the English, Scotch, and Irish can justly boast a 

 natural love for the horse cannot be denied. Our instinctive 

 desire to be his master, our aptitude to accommodate 

 ourselves, to some exclusive extent, to his ways, and a 

 facility of acquiring the art of riding him, are possessed 

 by us as by no other nation. Though we do not make 

 him, with true Arab zest, the omnipresent partner of our 

 occupations, and part and parcel of our history, still he, 

 more than any animal under the dominion of man, occupies 

 our thoughts and is our constant theme. We have seen 

 exhibitions of horsemanship by the Bedaween of the 

 desert, by the famed Tungustanee horse, by the pick of 

 the Maharatta and Mogulai so\\2iXs,fa7itasias executed by 

 the swarthy riders of the Sahara ; we have witnessed feats 

 in the saddle by the Gaucho and the Cow-boy, but, with 

 the exception of our own colonial kith and kin — the 

 Australian stockman — none can compare with the finished 

 horseman of these isles ; and no woman, save and except 

 H.I.M. the Empress of Austria and her sister the ex-Queen 



