LEAPING. 



99 



tice, is perhaps the easiest and safest of all. There are no 

 drains on either side ; the horse sees what he has to do and 

 knows how to do it co?i amove ; they can be measured to a 

 nicety. Some of the walls one meets with in Ireland are 

 ugly customers ; the longer they are looked at the bigger they 

 grow, they are to be jumped but not looked over, and yet 

 the nimble natural fencers of the Emerald Isle top them 

 without an effort, flying them, no matter how high, but almost 

 invariably displacing a barrow-load of the top stones by a 

 parting kick from the hind feet. Their riders, too, knowing 

 no fear, send them at these seeming posers at a hand gallop, 

 and yet few chip their knees. A horse accustomed to hunt 

 with the Galway Blazers would skip over our Somerset, 

 Gloucester, or Oxfordshire walls. Properly speaking, when 

 a man is not in a great hurry, a wall should be ridden at 

 slowly, as recommended in the case of high stiff timber. A 

 good wall jumper is not, as a consequence, clever at rails or 

 gates. Banks, save in the case of Irish horses, " after the 

 manner born," must be taken on and off slowly. A clever 

 English hunter, one of those blessed with that handy ''fifth 

 leg," will soon learn how to accommodate himself to this 

 kind of fence, but many, unused to it, will attempt to fly it^ 

 and so come to grief 



In Ireland gates are not so common as with us ; the 

 connection between fields is frequently a gap built up with 

 stones, after the manner of a roughly improvised wall. 

 Having grazed one enclosure, the brood mare, a great leppej- 

 in her day, sees a nice tempting bite on the top of the 

 bank, so hops on the top of it followed by her foal. Having 

 grazed the top, she takes a fancy to spy out the nakedness 

 of the land in the adjoining field, and drops quietly from 

 her perch, clearing a drain en roitfe, and possesses herself 

 of it, the foal again following. So the child is brought up 



