298 HORSES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



get yery far away from it. But in the hunting- seat, 

 the instant a rider expects such a kick, by merely ris- 

 ing in his stirrups he at once raises from the saddle, 

 the point his enemy intends to attack, and accordingly 

 the blow aimed at it fails to reach it." 



The worst of positions is the bent attitude of the last 

 paroxysm or exertion which helped the rider into the 

 saddle. The first bad trip even projects him over his 

 horse's head in a parabolic curve, ending in a concus- 

 sion of his brain or the dislocation of his neck, the horse 

 being uninjured. Rut when a man sits in his saddle 

 justly balanced, a sudden jerk forwards throws his 

 shoulders backwards. "In the event of a fall, the 

 horse is the only sufferer. He cuts his forehead, hurts 

 his nose, breaks his knees, bruises his chest; while his 

 head, neck, fore-legs, and the fore-part of his body, 

 forced into each other like the joints of a telescope, 

 form a buffer, preventing the concussion the horse has 

 received from injuring, in the smallest degree, the 

 rider. Seated in his saddle in the attitude we have 

 described, that admirable rider Jack Shirley, whipper- 

 in to the Tedworth hunt, with a large open clasp-knife 

 in his mouth, was one day observed fixing a piece of 

 whipcord to his lash, while following his hounds at a 

 slapping pace down hill, his reins lying nearly loose on 

 old Gadsby's neck." 



In confirmation of the theory that, when a man sits 

 properly in his saddle, it is the horse, and not the rider, 

 who suffers by a tumble, we are referred to several re- 

 markable escapes. A Northamptonshire rider, taking 

 a fence, jumped over it into a stone quarry. If he had 

 been in the bent attitude already alluded to, he must 

 have pitched on, and broken his skull, whereas his seat 

 being " just," only his ankles suffered. In like manner, 

 when, to escape the murderous stratagem of Mehemet 

 Ali, Amyn Bey spurred his charger over the low wall 

 of the citadel at Cairo, instead of being crushed by fall- 

 ing on the rock fifty feet below, he was able to crawl 



