288 



S TEEPLE- CHA SING. 



on the flat. As chasers, many of them that have been looked 

 on as T.Y.C. animals stay with ease for three miles or more 

 there are several winners over the four-and-a-half miles of the 

 Grand National course, indeed with a turn of speed for the 

 run home ; and over a country such horses frequently carry 

 with success twice the weight they have been accustomed to 

 gallop under for five or six furlongs. 



Formerly the hunting-field was the place where chasers 



A chaser. 



were sought, and that chasers were hunters was so generally 

 understood that we find the writer ' Cecil ' expressing doubts 

 as to whether Lottery was an agreeable horse to ride to hounds, 

 with a significance which implies that keeping Lottery exclu- 

 sively for steeple-chasing was considered rather sharp practice. 1 

 Superiority in the hunting-field seemed to give promise of 

 superiority between the flags ; but this is no longer the case. 



1 Lottery was, however, often hunted by Jem Mason during his steeple- 

 chase career and long afterwards. We have seen the pair out with the 

 Queen's staghounds twenty times or more. ED. 



