THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 77 



your fore-shoe is gone, must cause your heart to sink 

 within you, — it is the next bad hearing to '' a terrible 

 over-reach ;" it carries with it your sentence of excom- 

 munication, and renders you hors de combat till you can 

 be clumsily refitted at the nearest smithy. 



It is a common practice to carry a spare shoe and 

 nails ; and a jointed shoe which may, on a pinch, be fitted 

 to any horse's foot, is as much a part of the appendages 

 to the saddles of the hunts-people, as a horn-case or 

 couples ; but not more than one in ten, if half as many, of 

 the field have this advantage, which, after all, will not 

 save you the delay of finding a blacksmith, and of an 

 operation always too delicate to be hurried. 



Prevention is better than remedy. You must take 

 care that your horses are so shod, that the loss of a 

 shoe is less probable than breaking down, or horse or 

 man becoming otherwise disabled, by any of the other 

 casualties within the chapter of accidents. That they 

 may be so shod, I w^ill fearlessly aver, and again cry, 

 " Experto creeled There is no deeper or more holding 

 soil than that of Bedfordshire ; yet such mishaps were al- 

 most unknown in Lord Tavistock's establishment, during 

 four seasons, from 1S26 to 1830, when I hunted regularly 

 with the Oakley, and they are probably as rare in the 

 present day, if the shoeing is conducted upon the same 

 principle. At that time, these misfortunes to me were 

 rather out of proportion to the number of angels ' visits ; 



