256 THE COMPLETE FOXHUNTER 



got through it somehow, but fell in trying to jump 

 a gate immediately afterwards, and so injured his 

 little owner that all hunting was out of the question 

 for months to come. 



But the under-horsed man is more frequently seen 

 than the man who rides horses a good deal above his 

 weight, and, as a rule, the rider has been persuaded 

 that he and his horse are a fit, whereas they are quite 

 the reverse. "What you want is breeding, not size," 

 we once heard a dealer exclaim, who was trying to 

 palm off a lightly-made, fifteen-hands weed on a four- 

 teen-stone man, and the would-be buyer must have 

 been taken in by the remark, as he appeared at the 

 covert-side a day or two later on the same horse, but he 

 knocked it up in a month. 



There is no golden rule as to what weight horses 

 will carry, and often a horse which is light in appear- 

 ance will go through many seasons carrying a man 

 who, at a glance, is far too heavy for him. A short- 

 backed horse who is well ribbed up and well bred to 

 boot will often look a thirteen-stone horse, and yet can 

 carry fifteen stone with ease, and a big, loosely made 

 horse who looks up to a lot of weight will not be equal 

 to within two or three stone of what his appearance 

 suggests. In a really provincial country a strong cob 

 or a weight-carrying polo pony will give far more 

 satisfaction than a low-priced "hunter," and ought 

 probably to be much cheaper to buy. Many powerful 

 polo ponies are a little too short of pace to be valuable 

 for the game, and scores of these are in the market 

 at the end of the polo season, many of which make 

 capital light or medium weight hunters for an ordinary 

 country. 



If a man intends to hunt in the Shires or in the best 



