26 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hotmd 



riders and horses go to their well earned rejiast and rest. 



There are some special features about hunting in Virginia 

 that distinguish that country from all others. Especially is 

 tliis true about hunting in Warrenton. 



If you are not a judge of "horse flesh" or if you cannot talk 

 horse sideways and backwards morning, noon and night, take 

 the writer's advice and keep away from Warrenton. They 

 have got the horse fever down there and badly. The only 

 difference between Warrenton, Va., and Lexington, Ken- 

 tucky, is that at the latter place they talk horse and breed 

 them, as they make and take their whiskey, straight; but in 

 Virginia they sing it with variations. That's not all, "the 

 Virginia horses themselves are so well schooled," says JNIr. 

 Maddux, the well known M. F. H. of the Maddux Fox 

 Hounds and also INIaster of the Warrenton Drag Hunt, "that 

 many of them can speak in several foreign tongues." Here- 

 with is a full page illustration of Mrs. JNIaddux on her cele- 

 brated grey hunter, Torchlight. It is evident from the photo- 

 graph that JNIrs. JNIaddux is also most jiroficient. She sits her 

 horse to perfection and her hands, with slackened bridle reins, 

 show her a cross country riding artist and a past mistress in 

 the science of negotiating fences. 



The writer had a most dehghtful visit at the charming 

 country seat of JNIr. and INIrs. INIaddux, and a day with jSIr. 

 JMaddux's hounds over a grand hunting country, but he caught 

 the horse fever, therefore he talks horses in this chapter. He 

 can't help it; they say that after his visit to Virginia, he 

 talked horse in his sleep. 



The one thing in Virginia that most impressed the writer 

 was the bone they are producing in their hunters. It certainly 

 looks as if Virginia was destined to be the coming hunter- 

 horse-breeding centre of the United States. At least it is not 

 at all venturesome to predict that from Virginia is to come the 

 Irish hunter of America. 



