657 
iKi:>rrUanra 
A DETERMINEDLY VICIOUS MaRE THOROUGHLY TAMED. 
Having in former letters given it as my opinion that many 
brilliant hunters are thrown away for want of a patient trial, 1 
will here produce an instance in which one was preserved to 
signalize herself and her rider by a lengthened and determined 
perseverance, which although to the credit of my brother, 1 cannot 
recommend as a practice by reason of the danger which attended 
it. The facts are these. About the third or fourth horse I pur- 
chased was a four-year old filly that had gone amiss in train- 
ing, owing to symptoms of a sinew giving way. Of her breed- 
ing it is enough to say that she was got by Lord Sherbourne’s 
Spectre out of a Highflyer mare; her dam Fairy Queen by young 
Cade; she was in height fifteen hands and a half. Her form was 
that of the race horse, but she had lengthy shoulders, long hind 
quarters, great ribs, twisted fore legs, but excellently formed 
hind ones ; a head beautifully put on, coal black eyes, and the 
temper of a devil. 
Veterinary surgeons being in those days scarce, with the 
usual presumption of youth and ignorance combined, and fancy- 
ing myself a farrier , I set to work with her leg, and by the use 
of cruelly strong blisters made it twice the size of its fellow, 
and so it remained to her dying day. But she stood sound upon 
it ; and after having been subjected to the scrutiny of a great judge 
of horse-flesh, I sold her to my brother for thirty pounds. Of all 
the dangerous brutes that ever man threw a leg over at hounds I 
doubt whether her equal could have been found. She went head- 
long at every thing, and generally through every thing ; seldom 
rising at timber when she was required to do so ; but more than 
once jumping clean over a gate which she was not required to 
jump, and over a man ( and his horse ) at the same time , who was in 
the act of opening it. In short, she was for the two first seasons so 
apparently incorrigible and dangerous — though from her activity 
not falling so often as might have been expected — that a request 
was made to her rider to part with her before she broke his 
limbs or his neck. He however stuck to his mare, and in time 
she made one of the coolest and most perfect hunters ever taken 
to the field ; and in her eleventh year Lord Charles Somerset 
offered 200 guineas for her after seeing her performance from 
Staunton Park ; at the same time declaiing his conviction that 
the mare and her rider might be backed against England. 
Nimrod — New Sporting Mag,, July 1833, p. 195. 
4 S 
VOL. IX. 
