THE MODEEN HUNTER. 21 



jug speed and endurance sufficient to live with the best hounds 

 in any countries, except the very fastest, such as the Melton 

 MoAvbraj, the ^Northamptonshire, and, perhaps, the Vale of 

 Belvoir, where the fields are so large, the land all in grass, and 

 the scent so fine, that fox-hunting in them is in fact steeple- 

 chasing; so that no fox can live before the hounds on a fine 

 scenting day above half an hour, nor any horse, except a tho- 

 roughbred, live even that time with the hounds, having fourteen 

 stone or upward on his back. 



The three or four parts bred horses, of which I have been 

 speaking, are in general better leapers than pure-blooded horses; 

 are perfectly up even to sixteen or eighteen stone with hounds, 

 across any of the plough countries in which the scent does not 

 lie so hotly as on the grass lands ; and, indeed, across any coun- 

 try, whether grass or plough, in which the fields are small, the 

 enclosures frequent, and the dividing fences large and difficult. 

 For it must be borne in mind, first, that fences impede hounds, 

 which have to scramble over them, more than they do horses, 

 which take them in their stroke ; secondly, that it is necessary, 

 nine times out of "^^xi, to take a horse by the head, when 

 going at his leaps, and to give him a slight pull on alight- 

 ing, which in some degree allows him to catch his wind ; and, 

 thirdly, that in narrow fields of six or eight acres, which is per- 

 haps the average size in the arable countries, a horse cannot 

 extend himself in a racing stroke, as he can over the great forty 

 and sixty acre pastures of Leicestershire and Eutlandshire, but 

 must be kept going within himself, at a three-quarters gallop, 

 and always under a pull. Severe fencing, although it takes 

 something out of a horse, on the whole, undoubtedly favors the 

 lower bred hunter; because it always in a degree diminishes the 

 pace, and, as every sportsman knows, it is the pace that kills ; and 

 also, because the part-bred horse is, for the most part, both the 

 bolder and the hardier jumper— the thoroughbred, from the 

 thinness of his skin and the fineness of his coat, disliking to face 

 stifif thorny hedges, and having, in many cases, an insurmount- 

 able objection to cross bright water. 



These three or four part bred hunters are, I think, as a gen- 

 eral rule, the most beautiful horses I have ever seen ; far supe- 

 rior in form to the average of thoroughbreds. They have a good 



^^B^ 



