256 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



other hand, some horses will watch hounds and follow 

 their movements, turning as they turn, and I well 

 remember a very keen and clever little horse which 

 jumped a stiffish fence with a friend of mine and, 

 finding that hounds were running on the side he had 

 left, insisted on jumping back again, not altogether 

 to the satisfaction of the rider. 



If you have an intelligent horse, as has already 

 been said, it is worth while to try to cultivate and keep 

 his mental faculties bright and clear. 



A horse should, of course, be able to jump timber, 

 and one that will not do this is no use in Leicester- 

 shire. Rails are not infrequent and sometimes they 

 are the easiest, and often the only, way out of a field. 

 True, timber is not quite so frequently leaped since 

 people gave up jumping gates. Most people prefer 

 hedges to gates nowadays, but it is said, I think in 

 Mr. Cuthbert Bradley's " Reminiscences of Frank 

 Gillard," that the late Duke of Rutland used often 

 to jump five or six in a day's hunting. In Nimrod's 

 time a horse was expected as a matter of course to 

 jump a gate if required. Once, when the famous 

 writer lived at Bilton Hall, he was pursued by bailiffs. 

 The story goes that he met one of these gentlemen 

 in a lane and putting the young horse he was riding at 

 a high gate cleared it, and then turning in his saddle 

 observed pleasantly to the bailiff, " Was not that well 

 done for a young one ? " But if gates are nowadays 

 more often opened than leaped, rails and stiles are as 

 stiff as ever and are not more often shirked, so that 

 a Leicestershire horse must be able to jump them. 



Having made up our minds what we want, and 

 determined to buy our horses more for what they are 

 and what they can do than for what they look like, 

 where shall we get them from ? By far the majority 



