1 60 /// Scarlet and Silk 



could be raised to them ; if they cannot be 

 found, for Heaven's sake don't attempt to 

 manufacture them. A fence you can " copy " 

 with fair success, but until a ditch has been 

 made for a number of years, it ivill look like 

 a sawpit. 



Upon this subject the present editor of the 

 Sporting Life — and no keener lover of cross- 

 country sport, nor finer judge of it, exists — 

 writes : " Surely it is not out of the way to 

 appeal to the members [of the National Hunt 

 Committee] to consider at the next meeting 

 this question of the regulation ditch. What 

 is it they are waiting for ? If it is for signs 

 of the natural disinclination of horses to take 

 such an obstacle, evidence is supplied them 

 at every meeting in the land. If it is for 

 the dangerous nature of the fence, let them 

 set their clerks on a compilation of the 

 accidents that occur through its existence — 

 accidents too often fatal, both to horse and 

 man. . . . Farmers, breeders, hunting-men, 

 all have written in one strain of deadly 

 opposition to it." 



