STEEPLECHASE COURSES 199 



sport, should surely have very little difficulty in gain- 

 ing admission to the Bibury, Croxton Park, Ludlow, 

 or Southdown Club, or to the Rooms at Newmarket. 

 If he be a person who cannot find sponsors for and 

 secure election to any of these, or if he is not a farmer 

 or a farmer's son, in the vast majority of cases he 

 ought to be forced to appear what he is — a man who 

 makes a livelihood by riding. Some men who were 

 practically jockeys used to take a hundred acres of 

 land and pose as farmers, and the practice is not quite 

 extinct in spite of amendments to the Rule that have 

 been made, and are quoted in section {b) of rule 92. 



Steeplechase Courses 

 Prior to the establishment of the National Hunt 

 Committee, steeplechase courses were just what the 

 managers of meetings chose to make them. There 

 were temptations to err in both directions — in that 

 of excessive ease and of excessive severity ; in the 

 former, because the owner of the half-schooled hurdle 

 jumper might be, and often was, tempted to enter 

 for steeplechases, there being really nothing that 

 the creature could not easily jump ; in the latter, 

 because a dangerously big fence would attract a 

 sensation-loving crowd. The Committee therefore 

 decreed that courses should consist of so many fences 

 of given dimensions, and though the comparative 

 uniformity of the regulation course is somewhat to 

 be regretted, the ground and gradients at different 



