BREEDING OE HUNTERS. 243 



every other county that they have to look for pur- 

 chasers, as hunting men will scarcely ever buy from 

 farmers, however well they may ride, and have to 

 pay a handsome sum extra for their whim. Horn- 

 castle fair has long been the great Lincolnshire 

 Carnival of horse-flesh, and far the largest in England 

 for made hunters. Sporting foreigners are penetres 

 with its fame, and rush to see it and the sales of 

 blood -yearlings at Doncas/ere, with as much energy 

 as their agriculturists demand to be led to ' ' de beet- 

 root," the instant they set foot from one of Ben 

 Revett's chaises, on their Tiptree shrine. We have 

 it, in fact, on " Scribble's" authority, that an elderly 

 German Baron, not very long since, assured his Eng- 

 lish visitor, when they had drunk to the death and 

 memory of their last wild boar, that if now he could 

 only visit Horncastle Fair, he could die happy ! 

 Dealers and foreigners begin to be rife in its neigh- 

 bourhood about the fifth of August, and there are 

 still some lingerers on the twenty-first. Baron. 

 Rothschild's agent rarely comes, but purchases young 

 horses at all prices from 40 to 300, out of the best 

 hunting stables in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The 

 Welshmen bring nothing now; but the Irish-bred 

 horses are to be found in numbers hardly equal to 

 the demand. It takes a man some time to get accus- 

 tomed to their buck-fencing style (which a clever, 

 determined rider can soon modify) ; and when a 

 novice tries, for instance, to follow The Essex on one, 

 and finds it thrusting itself with its dainty heel-touch 

 off those huge banks halfway across the next field, he 

 begins to fancy that he will never come to earth again. 

 The great majority of them are called thorough-bred, 

 but not exactly according to the English standard, 

 which makes them about seven-eighths bred. 



The hunting humour of the present day inclines 

 very much to size, though welter weights, as a general 

 rule, get along best on apparently small but even 



R 2 



