WATER JUMPING. 59 



by the heat of the sun, has been observed at a bound 

 to clear thirty feet, and yet, on approaching a high wall, 

 the same animal slackens his pace, stops for a second, and 

 then pops over it. Almost any horse, particularly a young 

 one, if cantered at a small prickly furze-hedge, would pro- 

 bably with a little skip rather than a jump clear at least 

 fourteen feet, which in water would form a " brook " 

 that would stop more than half of the large field of riders 

 who in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire follow the 

 Pytchley, Quorn, and Cottesmore hounds. Indeed, it not 

 unfrequently happens that a ditch of glittering water, not 

 seven feet broad, over which every hound has hopped 

 hardly looking at it, will not only stop a number of horses 

 and riders, but in a few minutes will, to the utter disgust 

 and astonishment of the latter, contain several of them. 



To prevent, however, this unnecessary and apparently 

 discreditable botheration, all that is necessary is for the 

 rider to overcome and overrule the instinctive aversion 

 which his horse, and possibly he himself, have to jump 

 water. 



If, during a run with hounds, a young horse, that has 

 never seen a brook, going a good pace, without receiving 

 from the hands of his rider any tremulous check, arrives 

 at, say a low hedge, on the other side of which he sud- 

 denly sees a wide expanse of water, he is quite sure to 

 clear it ; and having thus broken the spell, if he be after- 



