BANKS AND DITCHES 183 



to reproduce. The man and the mare are just what staf^- 

 hunters should be, and equally good-looking. I delight in 

 the green coat and the careful ease of the abundant cravat. 

 But this mare is the veiy model of a stag-hunter. All blood, 

 fore-legs right under the points of her shoulders, long deep 

 ribs, no lumber, and I will wager you would hardly hear 

 her on the hardest high road — a great point in a stag- 

 hunter. Koad work, and fast road work, is inevitable, and 

 a noisy hackney-actioned horse knocks his legs to pieces in 

 no time, to say nothing of getting upon his rider's nerves. 



Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum. 



That is right enough on the permanent pasture or in an 

 hexameter, but it is a desolating sound on the Wokingham 

 and Beading road. 



Thoroughbred horses, Dick Christian told the 'Druid,' 

 make the very best of hunters. ' I never heard,' he declared, 

 ' of a great thing but it was done by a thoroughbred horse.' 

 They certainly make the best stag-hunters, for only blood, 

 and quality legs and feet, can stand the long distances, the 

 long runs, and the road work. Bucks is hilly, Berks is 

 deep. A slow or underbred horse is soon blown, if not actually 

 outpaced by staghounds, and the more confidence you have 

 in his jumping and his courage, the greater the disaster 

 when it comes. After twenty minutes you would not know 

 the horse ; poor devil ! as he rolls and slobbers along he 

 would not know himself. Is this the animal that devoured 

 the first four fields like a tiger, and jumped like an india- 

 rubber ball '? With the thoroughbred horse it is just the 

 other way. He is often a bad beginner, but the farther 

 he goes the better he goes. The first fence he all but fell 

 from getting too near it, the second fence not liking the look 

 of some straggling thorns he came round, the third fence he 

 left his hind legs ; but though annoyed or disappointed with 



