180 SALUTARY LESSONS. 



a certainty eight or nine feet of water, will afterwards, 

 Avlien excited with hounds, jump fifteen : if he does 

 not, I fear the fault will be in the rider, not the horse. 



I have seen a good round number of falls with 

 hounds, and have had enough myself to satisfy any 

 reasonable man. I speak, therefore, from observation 

 and practice, when I assert, that where one fall occurs 

 from large spreading fences (if within the bounds of 

 reason), twenty take place at blind awkward small ones. 

 It is to teach the horse how to manage these that re- 

 quires practice, and this it would take a very consi- 

 derable time to teach him with hounds. We may in 

 the course of a run come to a fence where the ditcli 

 is so filled by briers as to be all but imperceptible : 

 we ride him at it ; most probably he gets over, but he 

 has gained no lesson or experience by this ; he is not 

 aware he has escaped a trap : but if we had taken him 

 out, we will say shooting (and nothing makes a fencer 

 sooner), he would probably have been led over twenty 

 such in the course of the morning, for I would look 

 out for such for him ; he would perhaps have blun- 

 dered into three or four ; and, finding a bed of bram- 

 bles and thorns is not a bed of roses, that one day 

 would make him careful of such for life : and so on 

 with other descriptions of difficult places. Fair hunting 

 fences he will of course be rode over ; and doing these 

 when he has nothing to distract his attention from his 

 business — which is the leap — will teach him to do 

 them properly, and that in a very short time. Once 

 taught to do this, he is a hunter for ever, and a master 

 of his business. 



Of all things timber is what a horse should be made 

 the most perfect in taking, and get the most practice 

 at; first, because a mistake at stiff timber is more 



