HORSE FOR GRASS COUNTRIES 235 



their wits to save their necks and incidentally those 

 of their riders. Every one knows how quickly Irish 

 horses learn our Leicestershire fences. They are apt 

 to drop their hind-quarters into them at first, feeling 

 possibly for the familiar banks, but after a fall or 

 two, seldom serious, they understand exactly how 

 to manage. Some years ago I bought in Ireland a 

 mare which was so much in the rough that oats were 

 to her a novelty. There was no mistaking her clever- 

 ness when she was tried over the fences of her native 

 country. During the two seasons I rode her in 

 England she gave me one fall, dropping her hind- 

 legs on to a rotten bank in the Surrey Union Country 

 and rolling over into the next field. The lesson 

 was never forgotten. About the same time, or a 

 little later, I had an ex-steeplechase horse. He 

 had been admirably schooled, and, if you rode him 

 straight and hounds went fast, he would stride over 

 his fences in grand style, but he was a horse without 

 resources, and, if you asked him to go slowly at a 

 gap, to creep through an awkward bottom, or to 

 jump out of a road, he was as likely as not to give 

 you a fall. He was an old horse, and the mind had 

 been drilled and droned out of him. 



For all practical purposes such a horse is useless 

 in Leicestershire, where above all things you require 

 a made hunter. You may ride a run which is straight 

 and fast like a steeplechase once or twice in a month, 

 but you will probably see a hunt every day you go 

 out. On the horses with wits you may see every- 

 thing ; on the other class of horse you must wait 

 your chance and then, when hounds are running 

 hard, catch him by the head and send him along, 

 trusting in the extraordinary reserve of power that 

 a blood horse has, and a little too to the chapter of 



