-59- 



see him thunder down from a Limerick hillside gorse 

 on one of his enormous horses and rocket over the wall 

 or bank at the bottom was a sight not easily forgotten. 

 I at least could never catch him until the weight began 

 to tell and the big horse to tire; but, tired or not, 

 it had to go on galloping and jumping. I don't think 

 I ever lured him on to the scales, but am certain he 

 was giving me, at a low estimate, not less than eight 

 stone. He had mastered the truth that horses can give 

 away weight, but not distance, and was, I believe, 

 admitted to be one of the best heavy-weights in Ireland. 



With a nice free nunter that has come perfectly to 

 hand, it is quite easy, and may at times be useful, to 

 jump fences on the slant; not to ride at them straight, 

 but to take them at an angle. At quite small fences, if 

 you are in a great hurry, you can save ground by doing 

 this, but you must take care there is nobody near you 

 or you may get knocked over. I have more than once 

 found it very useful in the old-fashioned type of point- 

 to-point races, when there was only one flag and you had 

 to get to it by the shortest route you could find. 



In these days of tarred and slippery roads it is 

 again of value to be able to jump into them on the slant. 

 If there is a narrow grass siding and you land on it, 

 pointing in the direction you want to go, you can complete 

 the turn on the grass before coming on to the slippery 

 surface. But if you go straight in, your horse is on the 

 tar at once, tries to turn on it, and a fall is almost 

 inevitable, and such roads are nasty hard falling. I 

 have only tried this plan over small fences, when jumping 

 either from field to field or into roads, but I have read 

 that Asheton Smith, the mighty hunter, adopted it when 

 riding at very high, strong timber, on the grounds that, 

 so ridden, his horses gave him less dangerous falls. 



If you want to go straight in and out of a lane or 

 road, select a weak place or hole to go out at, and 

 chance the fence in. Any horse will jump into a road, 

 but it requires a very resolute one to jump out if the 

 fence is black and strong. . I have found this tip very 

 useful in point-to-point racing, and have seen many refu- 

 sals in that class of racing owing to the neglect of it. 



