FENCES AND FENCING. 321 



On the subject of fencing, men will always find ground fur 

 argument. The late Dick Christian was an authority not to be 

 lightly esteemed, and his remarks, as recorded by ' The Druid ' 

 in ' The Post and the Paddock,' were as follows : 



A quick and safe jumper always goes from hind legs to hind 

 legs. 1 never rode a steeple-chaser yet but I steadied my horse 

 on to his hind legs twenty yards from his fence, and I was always 

 over and away again before the rushers. If a horse can't light on 

 his hind legs, he soon beats himself; good rumps and good hind 

 legs, them's the sort ! A man should get his horse collected. 

 Modern gentlemen are so quick at their fences, their horses don't 

 get up, and don't spread themselves. Their front legs should be 

 higher than their hind ones when they come down : but not 

 bucking — I don't mean that. Lots of these young riders, they 

 know no more than nothing at all. They think horses can jump 

 anything if they can only drive them at it fast enough. They'd 

 never get hurt if they'd collect their horses ; they force them too 

 much at their fences. 



In this there is much shrewd common sense, the outcome 

 of the speaker's long experience (and Dick Christian was 

 familiar with the saddle for nearly seventy years) ; but that 

 horses ever land over fences on their hind legs — unless indeed 

 they, as it were, throw themselves, or buck, over a stiff piece of 

 timber : which is not steeple-chasing — is denied by modem 

 experts, who have the evidence of instantaneous photography 

 to support them. 



The feeling of a rider who lands over a jump must count 

 for something, and it w^ill be hard to find one who does not 

 say that he often feels the horse land on fore and hind legs 

 almost at the same time, but on the fore legs distinctly first. 

 The question has been tested in another way in which it is 

 hard to make a mistake. The hoof-marks of horses w^hich 

 have raced over moderate steeple-chase jumps have been ex- 

 amined ; and it has been found that in many cases the imprints 

 of the two fore and of the two hind feet have been within a very 

 few inches of each other, they have often actually been joined 

 together, the off fore and hind, the near fore and hind, making 



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