242 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



style, in their hunter-breeding, than the Yorkshire- 

 men. In fact, many dealers maintain that the large 

 bodies and the little heads come out of Shropshire, 

 and the little bodies and large heads from Yorkshire. 

 The probable explanation of this is, that the York- 

 shiremeii generally direct their attention to quick 

 returns, and try to breed great slapping carriage- 

 horses, to be sold at three years old for from .80 to 

 120, in the Howden market ; and if they cannot get 

 them big enough, they cut their tails and call them 

 hunters. An allusion to the size of the head in the 

 latter case would no doubt induce the venerable retort, 

 " What's the odds ? a horse don't go on his head !" 

 Shropshire, on the contrary, determines to have a 

 hunter, and nothing but a hunter, and has bred ac- 

 cordingly, since the days of the celebrated Old Tat, 

 who combined the Highflyer and Matchem strains, 

 and made the Shropshire-bred horses especially 

 famous, about the time that Mr. Meynell gave up 

 hounds. Rugeley in June is a very great fair for 

 hunters, Welsh and Shropshire, as well as troopers, 

 but the prices are not up to Horncastle ; and Stour- 

 bridge had also an immense repute, until Shrewsbury, 

 which is fixed for two weeks earlier in March, dealt it 

 a heavy blow. Rugby's horse fair, in November, in- 

 cludes all kinds, from the 300-guinea hunter down to 

 the ten shillings' potter's steed, in which Rugbxans 

 were wont in old times to invest, for the glory of one 

 afternoon's ride between the callings over, on condi- 

 tion that their old owners took them back at half- 

 price if they lived, or gratis if they died. 



The Yarborough, South Wold, and Burton hunts 

 are the great public schools, where the head, hands, 

 and heels of a legion of Hard-Riding Dicks are ever 

 at work for five months of the year, in transforming 

 the raw one-hundred-guinea Howdenite into the 

 finished two-hundred-guinea candidate for Horn- 

 castle. It is, however, to the dealers in this as in 



