HUNTERS 135 



will " ; and when in addition to great capabilities 

 a horse has the manners of a lady's park-hack, 

 the purse-strings should be loosened, and the 

 animal secured at any price, if there is a sufficient 

 balance at the bank to allow the extravagance, 

 for verily such horses will be seldom met with 

 throughout the experience of a long life. 



While an animal may be a perfect hunter in 

 one kind of country, he may be a very different 

 one, even an unsafe conveyance, in another where 

 the fences are of quite an altered character. The 

 high-spirited, galloping horse, which may be 

 invaluable amongst the oxers round the famous 

 covert, " John o'Gaunt," might easily break his 

 own neck, and his rider's too, over the huge 

 banks in Cornwall, if he had not had any 

 previous schooling over such obstacles, and 

 came fresh to them from a flying country — 

 such banks, for instance, as those near Padstow, 

 which are faced with limestone slates, set on 

 edge in herring-bone fashion, and which can 

 gash a horse like a knife, if he is so unfortunate 

 as to hit them with his knees or hind fetlocks. 

 On the other hand, a steed that might be perfect 

 over such banks, which would bound to the top 

 of one seven or eight feet high, and then, if 

 necessary, walk along it, or turn round and come 

 back the same way it went up, might yet be 

 dangerous at timber if taken to the shires, might 

 utterly decline to face a thick bulfinch, or tumble 

 ignominiously with its rider into the first brook 

 he came across, when it first made the acquaint- 

 ance of such unaccustomed fences. 



Experience, then, has taught one that horses 

 from a purely banking country, unused to thorn 

 fences, are often a long time before they learn 



