FENCES AND FENCING. 313 



courses, or lessees of steeple -chase grounds, a little money, and 

 would add greater uncertainty to the issues of races, a matter 

 which would chiefly affect the betting-ring, for a time, at least ; 

 till, in fact, it came to be understood and recognised that 

 inefficient hurdle-racers could not win over a country. 



The interest and excitement of a race would be very greatly 

 increased ; there would be more scope for horsemanship, more 

 probability that the best horse would win. For subsequent use' 

 as hunters, when they grew too slow for success between the 

 flags, it need scarcely be pointed out that those horses which 

 had competed in races over quasi- natural courses would be of 

 infinitely greater value than the animal which had learnt to 

 gallop over the Sandown fences with a jockey instead of a 

 horseman on his back. 



A few years ago fences were a good deal larger than they 

 are at present, and there was an outer) 7 against them as dan- 

 gerous, an outcry entirely without good reason. They were 

 dangerous, undoubtedly, to the sort of horse that was very 

 often seen, and accidents did happen ; but this was not the 

 fault of the men who arranged the courses. The mischief 

 arose from the simple fact that horses were set to do what they 

 had never been taught. An animal, it was thought, could 

 'jump ' that is, he could get over hurdles and had been driven 

 at a fence or two with more or less lucky results. Conse- 

 quently, after winning a selling hurdle-race one day, he was 

 entered for a steeple- chase on the day following. Unless aided 

 by undeserved good fortune, he fell at some fence the like of 

 which he had never seen. A cry of dangerous fences was at 

 once raised, whereas it was the horse that was dangerous ; for 

 he was set, without any schooling, to do what could only be 

 done with any degree of safety after much patient care had 

 been bestowed upon him. 



The result was, unfortunately, that fences were so cut down 

 that the hurdle-racer could gallop over them. The change is 

 most certainly not popular with riders, who know the dangers 

 of an easy course. Neither is it popular with the best class of 



