156 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



generally speaking, receives not the smallest injury from 

 the conflict. Again, when even a singed horse at great 

 speed has forced his way through a high, strong, spiteful- 

 looking thorn-hedge, frightening almost into hysterics the 

 poor little "bullfinch" that is sitting there, he almost 

 invariably passes through the ordeal with his skin per- 

 fectly uncut, and often not even scratched ! nay, a 

 horse going at great speed may be thrown head over 

 heels by a wire fence without receiving from it the 

 smallest blemish ! 



The trifling facts we have just stated will, we believe, 

 not only explain the courage and physical powers of 

 a hunter, but the difficulty of describing to non-hunting 

 readers, without an appearance of exaggeration, the feats 

 which, during a run, he can without danger or difficulty 

 perform ; for, instead of boasting about a large fence, it is 

 an indisputable fact that it is infinitely safer for the 

 horse, and consequently for his rider, than a little one, 

 at which almost all their worst accidents occur : indeed 

 when a liberal landlord, for the benefit of his tenants, 

 cuts through their fields a series of narrow deep drains, 

 to be loosely filled up with earth, it is good-humouredly 

 said by hunting men, that he is " collar -boning" them! 



And now it is an extraordinary truth -that the excite- 

 ment which the horse feels in simply witnessing the chase 

 of one set of animals after another, seems to pervade 



