THE BELVOIR COUNTRY 



passage is the hospital. The boiling-house and feeding-yard 

 are conveniently placed near the longitudinal passage. The 

 courts are paved with square flags, and the system of drainage 

 is complete and effective. 



But, having written much of the country and of the hounds, 

 it is time something was said of the horses, since they are 

 indeed a most important matter in a country which taxes the 

 powers of the best hunters to the utmost. And indeed many 

 good hunters have been raised in the country from the very 

 earliest times. It seems from a passage already quoted from 

 the Memoirs of the Belvoir Hunt that in the time of the third 

 Duke and Lord Granby the horses for the hunt were mostly 

 home-bred. About 1825, the Waltham Agricultural Society 

 was formed and an annual show held, and this was an im- 

 portant first step in the encouragement of the breeding of 

 horses in the district, which has been continued by the 

 successive Dukes of Rutland and Lord Forester up to the 

 present time. Now Sir Gilbert Greenall, whose judgment 

 and experience in horse-breeding are well known, is doing 

 his best to carry on the work and to help the farmers of 

 his hunt. 



Hunter-breeding is, and probably always will be, a lottery, 

 and like other games of chance it is most fascinating. " What 

 we want," said a breeder of experience, "is a big brown horse, 

 what we get is a little chestnut filly"; but the big brown 

 horse does make his appearance every now and again, and 

 then the breeder draws a prize in the lottery which probably 

 encourages him to go on for the rest of his life. The 

 Waltham Horse Show was founded in the time of Lord 

 Forester, in order to encourage the breeding of hunters. 

 Nimrod speaks of the backwardness of farmers in raising 

 hunters in his time, but he makes an exception in favour of 

 Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, a fair number of good hunters 

 being bred in those counties. Fryatt, of the George, had 

 several useful horses standing at Melton ; the famous Cannon 

 Ball and Vivalda were among them. Mr. Burbidge, of 

 Thorpe, sold a number of useful horses to the visitors to 

 Melton and Belvoir ; but 1 think that the majority of the 



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