MR, VICKERMAN IS BOWLED OUT 43 1 



pain was so intense as to make me feel sick and faint, my 

 bridle arm was completely disabled and I had as much as I 

 could do to remount my mare. 



The brute, whose name I heard afterwards was of 



near Braintree, neither stopped to render assistance 



or apologise, nor did he even turn round to see what extent of 

 mischief he had done. When I reached home and saw my 

 visage in the glass I found I cut a pretty figure, for the blood 

 even then still trickled from brow and nose and the skin was 

 more or less abrased or removed on the whole of the left 

 side of my face, from above the eyebrows to half way down 

 my neck, with the promise of a brilliant pair of black eyes. 

 Thus have I been first stumped out (in my horses), and 

 afterwards bowled out [in propria persona) and brought my 

 hunting to a premature end this season. 



Never surely was there so mild and dry a winter. Not a 

 frost since November. No pause for horses or hounds, and 

 many of the former screwed accordingly as a consequence, and 

 also because vegetation is so forward, all hounds left off hunting 

 sooner this season than any other I can recollect. 



December 6th, 1859. Riding "Cardigan" in a run with 

 stag, and coming at a fence near Row Wood, to all appearances 

 an ordinary " Roothinger," with the ditch towards me, but as 

 I came up to it it showed a sudden depression in the ground 

 at the take off. Failing to clear it he came backwards with 

 me, but clinorino- as well as he could with his forelegs to the 

 bank. In another instant he must have come quite backward, 

 for the bank was rotten and giving way, and would have fallen 

 on me and hurt me seriously ; but seeing the crisis and being 

 unable to extricate myself as I lay on my own back with my 

 shoulder against the edge of the ditch, I raised my legs and 

 planted both my feet firmly against my horse's quarters and 

 supported him in that position, trying the strength of my 

 vertebrae not a little for more than a minute, just enabling 

 him to save himself from coming quite backwards on to me 

 and gradually to feel his legs and at last to drop down upon 

 them to the bottom of the ditch, when he scrambled out over 

 my legs, &c. Thanks to being cool and quick and adopting 

 an ingenious expedient at the moment, I avoided any ill conse- 

 quences from one of the most ugly falls that ever occur, for 

 the results have sometimes been frightful when a horse has 

 fallen backwards on to his rider, the saddle generally doing 

 fearful damage. 



We had out to-day Col. Greathead an " Indian Notability " 



