THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 347 



power to increase the velocity of it, is difficult to account 

 tor, unless, as is the case with serpents and such aquatic 

 insects as have long bodies and no fins, he have the power 

 of inflecting the body to a certain extent, and thence 

 acquire an impetus. Swimming and flying are leaps 

 which take place in fluids, but they are produced by the 

 resistance these fluids make to the impulse of certain 

 surfaces, through which swimming or flying animals move 

 with great rapidity ; but the velocity is necessarily great 

 in proportion to the variety of the medium. The muscles 

 which produce it require, therefore, a force vastly superior 

 to that which is necessary for a simple leap upon a solid 

 surface ; but there is still another requisite for motions 

 which take place in fluids, which the horse does not 

 possess. The body being entirely surrounded by these 

 media, would find an equal resistance on all sides ; and 

 the velocity acquired by striking the fluid posteriorly 

 would soon be overcome by the quantity that must be 

 displaced anteriorly, if the animal had not the power of 

 considerably diminishing its surface immediately after it 

 has struck the fluid which power, also, the horse has not. 

 I certainly was indebted for the preservation of some of 

 my limbs, perhaps my life, for an exertion of this sort, 

 which enabled my horse to clear a sawpit that was on 

 the landing side of a fence I rode at. One who saw me 

 exclaimed ' Why did you not look before you leaped ? ' 

 when a wag answered him in the words of Horace ' Nemo 

 mortalium omnibus horis sawpit.' " 



The next pack visited by our hero was that of Sir 

 Richard Puleston. who hunted parts of Cheshire, Shrop- 

 shire, and North Wales, and his object for so doing was 

 this : he had been informed, by more than one good 

 judge, that Sir Richard was an excellent breeder of fox- 

 hounds ; in fact, that he had done much towards ridding 

 them of those coarse points which, whilst they disfigured 

 them, were found not to be essential to strength and 

 endurance, but evidently impediments to speed. Then he 

 had another motive for visiting Sir Richard's pack. He 

 was at that time one of the very few masters of fox- 

 hounds who hunted his own hounds, and, as he hoped 

 some day or another to hunt a pack himself, he was 

 anxious to see a gentleman placed in that difficult and 

 trying situation. Nor was he disappointed in Sir Richard, 

 who exhibited much good judgment in his casts, and drew 



