Introductory 



effect upon the sportsman. All boys and girls ought to 

 learn how to jog their hunters quietly to the meet, how to 

 ride them all day with a view to having to get them home 

 at night, and how to get them home after a hard day. Until 

 they have done all these things, and done them in the right 

 way, they are not fit to be called Fox-hunters, or to have 

 horses of their own. Experience is the best school. But 

 the tendency of motor transport is to rob the young genera- 

 tion of this experience. Horse-mastership is left to the 

 servants, and as soon as the fur coat, the thermos bottle, 

 and the car can be found by telephone or otherwise, the 

 horse is handed over to the groom to get home in the best 

 way he can. Equally, the fatal facility with which the 

 motor-car covers long distances to the meet, not previously 

 attempted, may very well make people a little careless about 

 asking their men and horses to cover these same distances, 

 starting while their masters are in bed. 



But this is not all. The general use of mechanical 

 transport on the public roads has caused them to be treated 

 in such a manner as to make riding on them a real danger, 

 a far worse one than jumping the fences. No horse, how- 

 ever quiet, can travel to-day on the glazed surface of our roads 

 without being in constant danger of slipping up, breaking 

 his rider's leg, and very likely injuring himself. This with 

 a quiet horse. To mount a horse that is inclined to jump 

 about on these hard, black, shiny, slippery superficies re- 

 quires courage of no mean order. It was bad enough to 

 have to get on to a snorting animal in the old days before 



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