148 HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP 



can be made perfectly quiet by exercise, and the 

 quickest way to get him in that condition is to 

 gallop him, provided his legs are sound enough. 

 The best way is to have him out hacking four 

 hours a day, at six miles an hour. 



Show-Ring Jumps 



In the United Kingdom, I think, we lack a little 

 originality in making obstacles in the show-ring. 

 We are all too accustomed to seeing nothing else 

 but a gate, a wall, a rail and a water-jump. In 

 Ireland it is somewhat different. There they 

 have banks, stone walls, but marking is in these 

 cases much more difficult. We have the same or 

 practically the same courses year after year, 

 and yet there are a great number of varieties 

 which could be erected. Some novelties are im- 

 doubtedly wanted, and to get ideas we cannot do 

 better than imitate some of the courses which have 

 been made on the Continent, where things are better 

 done, I think, than with us. 



One course which I had the pleasure of riding 

 over, and which I thought at the time was an 

 exceptionally good one, was as follows : — 



(1) Preliminary bush fence. 



(2) An " in and out." This represented a road- 

 way with a post and rails on each side of it, so that 

 the first rail had a ditch on the far side, and the 

 second a similar ditch on the near side. The rails 

 were about 4 feet 3 inches in height, and the ditch 

 was roughly 4 feet broad — a capital jump for 

 testing a hunter. 



(3) A wall, 4 feet 6 inches. 



