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THE HUNTER. 115 



berland in the north, Sussex in the south, Lincolnshire 

 and Essex in the east and Devon in the west, and you will 

 find that men who have the money or the credit will 

 mount themselves on well bred, upstanding horses able to 

 gallop and jump. Of course on Exmoor and Dartmoor where 

 there is no jumping, in Kent and Sussex where big woodlands 

 are met with sufficiently often to cause checks, and in close, 

 rugged countries wherein climbing and creeping are more the 

 rule than galloping and jumping flippantly from field to field, 

 a good deal of sport can be seen from the back of a horse 

 which would be of no earthly use in a grass country in which 

 are small coverts. But a few times in a season hounds run 

 hard in the worst of countries, and then it is that the value of 

 a good horse is seen. To put the matter shortly, no man 

 rides a worse horse if he can afford a better. Jumping a 

 country is merely a matter of local practice, and there is no 

 reason whatever why a horse which can get over a grass 

 country should not, after a little practice, be an equally 

 brilliant performer over the wide Roothing ditches of Essex, 

 the banks of Dorsetshire, the stone walls of Gloucestershire, 

 or the formidable ramparts of Devon. In every country in 

 England horses are seen which would not disgrace themselves 

 on the grass anywhere. 



These well bred, strong horses, then, are the ones the 

 breeder wants to produce if he can, as they bring the most 

 money. In the majority of years each individual will have to 

 remain content with a lower standard and consequently a 

 lower price, and what he fondly hoped would turn out a high 

 class hunter may eventually have to be sold as a harness 

 horse. 



The writer has always advocated that at horse shows the 

 brood-mares should be divided into two classes. When 

 numbers of mares of all sorts and sizes are shown together, 

 the prizes naturally go to those showing most quality. It 

 would be well, therefore, to have one class for mares them- 

 selves up to 14 stone, at least, with hounds, and the other for 



