HUNTING WHIPS. 147 



nothing to do with the hounds may he Ught, hut it 

 should have a good crook and be stiff enough to stop a 

 gate. A small steel stud outside the crook prevents the 

 gate from slipping ; flat lashes of a brown colour have 

 recently come into fashion, but they are mere matters of 

 fashion like the colour of top boots, points to which 

 only snobs pay any attention — that is, those asses who 

 pin their faith in externals, and who, in the days of 

 pigtails, were ready to die in defence of those absurd 

 excrescences. 



The stock of a whip made by Callow for a hunting 

 nobleman to present to a steeple-chasing and fox-hunting 

 professional, was of oak, a yard long, with a buck-hom 

 crook, and a steel stud ; but then the presentee is six 

 feet high. 



Every hunting-whip should have a lash, but it need 

 not be long. The lash may be required to rouse a 

 hound under your horse's feet, or turn the pack ; as for 

 whipping off the pack from the fox in the absence of 

 the huntsman, the whips and the master, that is an 

 event that happens to one per cent, of the field once 

 in a lifetime, although it is a common and favourite 

 anecdote after dinner. But then Saint Munchausen 

 presides over the mahogany where fox-hunting feats 

 are discussed. One use of a lash is to lead a horse 

 by putting it through the rings of the snaffle, and to flip 

 him up as you stand on the bank when he gets stuck 

 fast, or dead beat in a ditch or brook. I once owed the 

 extrication of my horse from a brook with a deep clay 

 bottom entirely to having a long lash to my whip ; for 

 when he had plumped in close enough to the opposite 

 bank for me to escape over his head, I was able first to 

 guide him to a shelving spot, and then make him try 

 one effort more by adroit flicks on his rump at a 



