TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE WORK. 57 



day's hunting is by no means always the same, if 

 an unusually severe run takes something unusual 

 out of one of his nags, so a very light clay's work 

 may enable his Monday's horse to come again on 

 the Friday; but however stout and good a horse 

 may be, he cannot be expected to stand very 

 frequent extra work to favour a delicate stable 

 companion : it will thus be seen that the fewer 

 horses a man keeps the better they must be, that 

 is, so far as endurance of regular exertion goes. 



The man of forty thousand a year can afford 

 to keep a stud-groom who never lays a hand on a 

 brush; so he may keep two or three or more 

 favourite flyers who can only on an average come 

 once in ten days : but the man of eight hundred 

 or a thousand a year must keep men who can 

 and wdll strap, and must keep horses who in their 

 vocation can strap also ; if he does not, he must 

 hunt very seldom, or ride horses under their 



work. 



There are two especial circumstances that oc- 

 casion hunters to be unfit for the work they are 

 called upon to perform. The one is too little 

 work, the other too much of it; for the want 

 of proper feeding w^e do not contemplate as likely 

 to occur in any gentleman's stables. I am quite 

 aware that where any great performance is wanted, 

 the horse overworked, as to work, would be a 

 preferable animal to the one short of it; in 



