36 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



perately wounded, his master, whom he never intended 

 to hurt. 



In the hunting field, the bent position in the saddle 

 produces equally unpleasant results. On man and horse 

 coming cheerily to a fence, with what mathematicians 

 call "an unknown quantity" on the other side, if the 

 rider sits justly on his saddle, it is the horse and not he 

 that receives the concussion of any fall that may ensue, 

 simply because the spring of his animal in taking the 

 leap had thrown his shoulders backwards, and conse- 

 quently his head out of danger ; whereas the nose of the 

 gentleman who had been riding alongside of him in the 

 bent attitude of a note of interrogation, is seen to plough 

 into its mother earth the instant the muzzle of his horse 

 impinges upon it. 



For exactly the same reasons, in every description of 

 fall (and no volume would be large enough to contain 

 them all), similar results occur ; and yet there is no pre- 

 dicament in which "Toady" appears to greater disad- 

 vantage, and so keenly feels it, than when, in following 

 the hounds, he has to descend a very precipitous and 

 rather slippery grass hill. 



If a horse be but properly dealt with, he can gallop 

 down a turf hill with nearly as much rapidity as along 

 a racecourse. A tea-table would stand ill at ease on the 

 declivity, because its limbs are immoveable; but a qua- 



