284 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



proportion to its suddenness, they would be more careful 

 than they are. I could have told you all about these 

 matters when I left Cambridge ; but when I used to see 

 a passenger on my coach amusing himself with watching 

 the shot from the fore- wheel, which, on certain parts of 

 our road, would rise to a considerable height, whilst I was 

 springing them, I would say to myself, ' that fellow little 

 thinks he is taking a lesson in conic-sections, and that 

 the parabola and their properties, which those bits of dirt 

 are describing, are the foundation of gunnery.' " 



Frank Raby. " Why, Jack, you are becoming 

 scientific." 



Jack Webber. " Not much of that ; but if some 

 cleverer fellow than myself were to put these few points 

 before road coachmen, in plain English, and in a small 

 tract, published at a low price, the travelling public would 

 be great gainers." 



Houghton. " Whilst on the subject of science, I wish a 

 pathometer could be used, to enable us to judge of the 

 sufferings of horses in coaches that travel so fast, and in 

 which long stages are run with very indifferent horses." 



Jack Webber. " I think the suffering of coach-horses is 

 becoming less every year. In the first place, they are of 

 a better description of horse than formerly, which very 

 much reduces it ; secondly, they are much higher fed ; 

 and, lastly, stages are much shortened. We have now but 

 few twelve-mile, and no fourteen-mile stages. I have 

 heard my father say that, when he went to Rugby school, 

 there was a team on the Coventry and London road, called 

 ' The twenty milers.' They went from the ' Blue Boar,' 

 on Dunsmore Heath, to the ' Black Lion,' at Towcester 

 just twenty miles." 



Houghton. " The ' Blue Boar ' and the ' Black Lion ! ' 

 who ever heard of either, except in the imagination of a 

 madman 1 " 



Jack Webber. "We may as well ask, who ever saw a 

 white lion, or a unicorn, the latter one of the supporters 

 of our crown ? For my part I never could find out anyone 

 who could tell me what is meant by the word unicorn. 

 It cannot be an animal with one horn, because we read 

 in scripture of the horns of the unicorn. 



Houghton. " I believe it to have been a kind of rhino- 

 ceros, whose history is not given us in scripture, but 

 mentioned by Moses, as having the strength of God ; or 



