S6 Management and Treatmeitt of the Horse. 



to jump ; " they are generally those that can 

 gallop through a line of gates or down a lane, 

 but cannot get their hearts high enough to take 

 a sheep hurdle. They are like a well-known old 

 sportsman, near Melton Mowbray, who used to 

 hunt up to his eightieth year, and when he came 

 to a flight of rails, would say to his groom, 

 ''Tom, knock the top rail off,'' When that was 

 done, he would say, ''Knock another off, and I'll 

 go over if I break my neck." These gentlemen 

 somehow or other seem to always get good 

 horses, and when they have them they have not 

 pluck to ride them. 



SPLIXT. 



Hunters, from the nature of their work, are 

 liable to meet with many injuries from which 

 other horses are exempt, among which are thorns, 

 overreach, blows from rails, and striking one leg 

 against the other when galloping through heavy 

 ground. This is often the cause of splint, one of 

 the most troublesome kinds of lameness, for the 

 horse is often lame with splint, and being in its 

 incipient form, it does not set up enough local 

 inflammation to enable the unskilful to flnd out 

 its seat, and many horses are said to be lame in 

 the shoulder when it is an incipient splint below 

 the knee that causes the mischief. Some cases 

 have come under my observation in which, 

 although the animal has not been able to put its 

 foot to the ground, the cause has been a splint 

 not larger than a grain of wheat close up under 

 the knee, and coukl be detected only by an ex- 



