PREFACE. 



About three-quarters of this book is new ; the remaining 

 quarter having appeared in the last (third) edition of Riding 

 on the Flat and Across Country, 47 illustrations of which have 

 been utilised. The present work contains 260 illustrations. 



In the former book I made no mention of hunting ; because, 

 when I wrote it, my riding experience, except when I was a 

 boy in Ireland, had been chiefly confined to steeplechasing, 

 racing, schooling and pig-sticking in India, and to military 

 riding when I was a subaltern in a field battery. On my 

 return to England in 1892, after teaching Boers and other 

 residents in South Africa how to break in horses, I was 

 fortunately able to spend two seasons in Leicestershire and 

 one in Cheshire. The knowledge gained during these three 

 years impressed me so much with the fact that riding in Eng- 

 land is almost inseparable from hunting, that I determined to 

 combine the two subjects as soon as I could collect sufficient 

 fresh material and new illustrations to justify the change of 

 the former title to Riding and Hunting. During the last 

 four years, I made a special study of the Continental system 

 of military riding. Being in no way a hound man, I sought 

 and obtained the valuable aid of Captain King-King, late 

 13th Hussars, whom I had the pleasure of knowing at Melton 

 Mowbray. His deep knowledge of hunting is the result of 



