CAPTAIN Nolan's saddle. 141 



demi-pique saddle, — a bad plan for the yonng, as the 

 English saddle becomes a separate difficulty. But to 

 those who merely aspire to constitutional canters, and 

 who ride only for health, or as a matter of dignity, I 

 strongly recommend the Somerset saddle, invented for 

 one of that family of cavaliers who had lost a leg below 

 the knee. This saddle is padded before the knee and 

 behind the thigh to fit the seat of the purchaser, and if 

 provided with a stuffed seat of brown buckskin will give 

 the quartogenarian pupil the comfort and the confidence 

 of an arm-chair. They are, it may be encouraging to 

 mention, fashionable among the more aristocratic middle- 

 aged, and the front roll of stuffing is much used among 

 those who ride and break their own colts, as it affords a 

 fulcrum against a puller, and a protection against a kicker. 

 Australians use a rolled blanket, strapped over the pom- 

 mel of the saddle, for the same purpose. To bad horse- 

 men who are too conceited to use a Somerset, I say, in 

 the words of the old proverb, " Pride must have a fall. " 



The late Captain Nolan had a military saddle im- 

 proved from an Hungarian model, made for him by 

 Gibson, of Coventry Street, London, without flaps, and 

 with a felt saddle cloth, which had the advantage of 

 being light, while affording the rider a close seat and 

 more complete control over his horse, inconsequence of 

 the more direct pressure of the legs on the horse's flanks. 

 It would be worth while to try a saddle of this kind for 

 hunting purposes, and for breaking in colts. Of course 

 it could only be worn with boots, to protect the rider's 

 legs from the sweat of the horse's flanks. 



With the hunting-horn crutch the seat of a woman is 

 stronger than that of a man, for she presses her right 

 leg down over the upright pommel, and the left leg up 

 against the hunting-horn, and thus grasps the two pom- 



