78 THE HORSE 



suitably made and of docile and generous disposition, make 

 the finest hunters in any country, there is a strange anti- 

 pathy to them on the part of many riders, and I have been 

 told by large dealers that they dare not admit to the gene- 

 rality of their customers that a horse they are admiring is in 

 the Stud Book. " Almost thoroughbred, my lord — in fact as 

 good as if he was so," sells many a horse, when if the truth 

 were admitted it would cause the customer to turn away at 

 once. Such is the power of prejudice ! And yet, looking 

 back over half a century of hunting, the great gallops which 

 remain in memory were all on horses of blue blood, or so 

 nearly thoroughbred that they were capable of winning 

 races on the flat or between the flags. 



Some Good Gallops. 



First-hand evidence is ever held in the highest esti- 

 mation in our Law Courts, and therefore proofs of the 

 value of high descent will be shown by the narration 

 of the following runs in totally different kinds of countries, 

 not one of which would have been seen if mounted 

 on an animal with but one or two crosses of blood. 

 One great gallop was seen on Kedbourne, then coming 

 five years old, who had run as a three-year-old in the 

 Derby won by Hermit twenty months previously, and who 

 was half-brother to Wolsey who ran a dead-heat for the 

 Cambridgeshire with Lozenge ; while yet another brother 

 was third for the Derby, in Lord Falmouth's colours, 

 running as The Repentance colt. Getting rather a bad 

 start from Goldsborough Moor, and with hounds racing at 

 their topmost speed, Kedbourne soon made up the lost 

 ground, and in a short time we were absolutely alone with 

 the pack. Just before the fox saved his brush for the 

 moment, in a drain under a gateway in the road close to 

 Scriven, I saw him in the last field not fifty yards before the 

 leading hounds, who caught sight of their quarry before he 

 reached the hedge, and raced him down the road till he was 

 glad to squeeze into any refuge ; and when Sir Charles 

 Slingsby came up, it was a great satisfaction to be able to 



