CARE OF THE WOUNDED 183 



and it should be rare that we get him so much beat 

 as to have difficulty in getting him home. This, 

 however, may happen, and there are some horses 

 which will go on pulling and giving us trouble to 

 the very last minute when with hounds, and directly 

 they are turned away from them we find they can 

 scarcely walk. The only thing to do is to jump off 

 and walk, and get them home, if possible, as quick 

 as we can. A pail of gruel, with a pint of beer or 

 stout in it, procured at the first public-house we come 

 to, may work wonders. For further advice, see 

 pp. 201, 202, Riding Recollections. 



14. TJiorns. — These should be carefully looked 

 for after every day's hunting. Clipping the hair 

 on the legs greatly facilitates the finding of them. 

 It is now-a-days just as fashionable to clip horses' 

 legs as it used to be to leave the hair on them. 

 The argument in favour of the latter was that 

 the hair turned the thorns. This seems more than 

 doubtful. 



It is wonderful that horses in bursting through 

 thick places do not pick up more thorns than they 

 do ; probably the very pace and force with which 

 they do it is their chief safeguard. It is certainly a 

 fact that a man out shooting, and wearing knicker- 

 bockers and stockings, gets far less pricked if he 

 jumps boldly and crushes through a fence, than he 

 does if he climbs or scrambles slowly through. 



A pair of tweezers, for extracting thorns, should 

 be in every Officer's active service knife, and, it goes 

 without saying, in his hunting and shooting one also. 



