THE COUNTIiY IN WIITCII TO HUNT 3 



In these grass countries, even if you class your- 

 self among the light-weight division, if you aspire 

 to ride to hounds and not after them all day, you 

 must have two horses. The exertion of jumping big 

 fences at an almost steeplechase pace takes more 

 out of a hunter than even the heaviest of plough, 

 and, consequently, he takes longer to come round 

 after a gruelling day, which, you must remember, 

 falls to his lot more frequently here than elsewhere. 

 Hear the words of one of the greatest hunting 

 prophets, ' Nimrod,' to wit, about sixty years ago : 

 ' In Leicestershire the universal practice is for each 

 sportsman to have at least two hunters in the field 

 on the same day, a practice found to be economical, 

 as it is from exhaustion, the effect of long-continued 

 severe work, that the health of horses is most 

 injured ; and when it is also borne in mind that 

 one horse in six in every man's stud is, on an 

 average, lame or otherwise unfit for work, and that 

 a horse should always have five days' rest after 

 a moderate, and at least seven or eight after a 

 severe, run with hounds, it will not be thought 

 surprising that ten or twelve hunters should be 

 deemed indispensable for a Leicestershire sports- 

 man.' And these v;ords are true in the main now, 

 though many a guod man has hunted, and 

 doubtless will, over Leicestershire, with a smaller 

 stud. 



B 2 



