232 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



which the levers refuse to act. The fact is that it 

 is as impossible to generalise about the intelligence 

 of horses as about that of men. In both cases, how- 

 ever, we find after examining a number of cases 

 that there is a sort of average of mental power, which 

 may be counted on, and of stupidity, which must be 

 reckoned with. In the horse, and more particularly 

 in the hunter with which we are at present specially 

 concerned, this average intelligence is increased by 

 the influence of education and of heredity. 



I am not prepared to dogmatise about horse breed- 

 ing in general or hunter breeding in particular, but 

 on one point I am quite clear, and that is that, if 

 we desire excellence in any particular quality, we 

 must breed from parents which have a record of 

 performances in the line we desire. I am sure that 

 hunters should be bred from thoroughbred or half- 

 bred sires which have won races or steeplechases, or 

 at least run in such form as to prove their staying 

 power and their courage, and from mares with a 

 satisfactory record in the hunting field. We shall 

 find, when we look back over the long string of horses 

 that must have passed through the hands of any 

 man who devotes his leisure to hunting and riding, 

 that the variety of the intelligence of horses is as 

 great as that of their make and shape, but that of 

 both there is an irreducible minimum, without which 

 there cannot be a hunter. The mental gifts, however, 

 are indispensable, for I have known horses poorly 

 shaped, at all events to the eye, to go well over a 

 country, but I never knew a really stupid, silly, 

 cowardly, or sour-tempered horse that was a safe 

 conveyance. 



In looking back over the very many horses I have 

 ridden, those that stand out in memory as of ex- 



