HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP. 21 



the nicest tact in timing the operation, the confusion, over- 

 balancing, swerving, and shifting of legs resulting from it, 

 would lose the best horse his race. 



A mounted horse will overtake a dismounted horse, his 

 superior in speed. It is commonly supposed that this 

 results from the mechanical assistance of the rider. The 

 real reason is, that the dismounted horse goes off, like an 

 inexperienced jockey, at his utmost speed. No horse can 

 do this for five hundred yards without being distressed for 

 wind. The rider starts at a pace which he knows his horse 

 can keep ; and the dismounted horse, though he gains at 

 first on him, comes bach to him, as the jockeys say. For a 

 horse, which has been distressed for wind in the first five hun- 

 dred yards, will not arrive at the end of a mile nearly so 

 soon as if he had gone the whole at the best pace he could 

 stay at. Here the assistance from the rider is mental, not 

 mechanical. Woe also to the sportsman who ambitiously 

 attempts to lift his horse mechanically over a fence, on the 



