54 BIDING. 



Let your horse, if he is anything of a fencer, choose 

 his own way and pace to take his jumps. 



In riding to hounds, if practicable, it is well to avoid 

 newly made or repaired ditches or fences : your steed 

 is apt to encounter such with diffidence ; he does not 

 take the jump with the same will, fears there's " some- 

 thing up," and from want of confidence may very pos- 

 sibly make a mistake. 



It would be well, for cross-country horsemen more especially, 

 to bear in mind Sir Francis Head's observation, as applied to riders 

 as well as horses, that " the belly lifts the legs ; " meaning, I take 

 it, that if man or horse is out of tone from derangement of the 

 stomach or general debility, he cannot be up to the mark or fit 

 for any physical exertion. It is well known to steeplechase riders 

 and men who ride straight to hounds, that occasionally, in conse- 

 quence of inertion, indulgence, or dissipation, having deranged the 

 stomach or nervous system, a rider will be done up before his 

 steed, who, oppressed with a comparatively dead weight knocking 

 about on his back, will himself follow suit from want of being held 

 together, and probably come a burster at some jump before the 

 finish. 



To a practical horseman the act of standing in the 

 stirrups will suggest itself as a matter of expediency to 

 ease himself, when the horse is pulling hard at or near 

 his full galloping pace. 



The great advantage of a rider easing his bearer by 



fortunes related, as they frequently are, in pretty nearly the fol- 

 lowing terms : — " I found my horse going sluggishly at his fences ; 

 and one place looking rather biggish, I shook him up with the bit, 

 and put both heels into him to rouse him, but somehow or other 

 the brute took off too soon, caught his fore feet, I suppose, against 

 something, and came such a cropper on the other side ! " or, " The 

 beast kept going at such a bat at his fences that I brought him to 

 book with my hands down, and with a good pull steadied him ; but 

 the brute with his awkwardness missed his footing on landing, 

 dropped his hind legs into the brook somehow, and fell back on me, 

 giving me a regular sousing ! " 



