The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-12-02 00:00:00

ORIGINAL COMMUNICAIIOI4S.

THE HORSE, AND FACTS AND FANCIES
ABOUT HIN.—No, 14

The hunter is an animal peculiar to England. Yon
meet with him in no other country under the sun: It
is the manly plunk, the spirit, the generetis ambition of
English horsemen of wealth, that have " created," as
it were, the English hunter. Crosses of Arab and
English blood, of Moorish and Tartar with English, and
care in crossing at home, with scientific management
almost immediately following birth, have produced the
high-boned, powerful thoroughbreds: short of leg and
as strong as an oak, floating over on-finch and bob-finch
with fourteen stone upon their backs, whilst hounds are
going like blazes. It is not every animal dubbed a
hunter that is one, any more than our neighbour who
when called in courtesy a gentleman, is really one. For
one reality in either case yoti Will meet with Scores of
counterfeits. Many a man apes after "blood" in his
idea of • hunter, and is satisfied with a weedy-looking
and weedy-constitutioned beast, that has neithernatuie
or stamina to go to beagles, much less foxhounds.
Others pay too much thought to "bone." without look-
ing at the material, therefore the " cart mare" peeps
out in a few minutes' severe work. The grand point
for hunters now-a-day is to have bone and blood; if
they have this, and are deep chested, well loined, short
legged, " big" little horses, the blood cannot
be too pure, nor the care too great to be
taken of thein, nor the price too notch (in a gort of
reason) to pay for thein. All things appertaining to
English habits, customs, sports, and manners, have
changed vaatly since the last century. We are all
"feat" nose. /n everything but genuine manliness
and honourable principles—we cannot well assert we
have been " too fast" over the past age in these things.
But the pleasures, the participators in them, are all
"fast" The age is of high-pressure, railroad pace.
Women are not like their great grandroothersin nature,
education, or tone; nor are men like their grandfathers
in many points, nor would we like them to be so. We
like what refines and elevates the character in man or
woman, but we question if NO do not now draw the
blood too fine, if *a do not draw the cord too tight, if
we are not false to nature in overdoing her and shaming
her in this excessive strairt after novelty, sensation,
fastness ! Hunters in the olden time were different
animals altogether to the present. /n past days a fox
was found by the dreg as soon is it wee lightaild before
lie had digested his chicken, therefore he could not be
I supposed lb run so fast as one whipped out of an acre
of gorse at twelve o'clock at noon, as is fashionable now.
Indeed one can hardly conceive what revolution, politi-
cal or natural, ()mild be more complete than that made
between foshunting—.past and present. The style of the
hound, the horse, and the man who rides him have all
undergone a change in the regular march of time, and
foxhunting has not been excluded from that blaze of
"fast" life, which has dawned, as we have before said,
on our present age. Whether this "fastness" will
extend, or what it will unmake, or remake, or tarn
down, or set fire to, or cohstime, is hot for us to trouble
ourseltme here. It is enough for us to observe that
wheneVer improvement finds its way into one part of
an establishment, it insist be accompanied by improve-
ment in others, or the benefit Of it is lost; and if the
fox and the boon& falter" in 1862 than they did
in 1762, the horse that follows thetti must go "faster"
alga When we began to look at foxhounds
on a pony, in the Christmas holidays, some
thirty yews ago, they appeared to us different
kinds of animals to those which we have
since seen. Comparatively speaking, harriers now go
to the pace of foxhounds in these days, and foxhounds
to that of greyhounds. The style of the horse, the seat
upon him, have all been revolutionized, and foxliunting
in some counties must soon change its name to
"racing after a fox." Now-a-day this nothing utitumal
to see first-rate horgemeh motinted, and
going like great guns (as they feel themselves beaten)
two or three miles in five-and-twenty minutes. In
Leioestershire this is often the cage—then whence the
difference between going in this fashion acmes country,
or over the Newmarket course on a race.horse ? The
pace, when going, must be nearly the same, and the'
only thing that can enable the hunter to continue it, is
his increase of bone, his purity of breed, and his
"condition," Taking for granted, then, a man has
got his banter, and has faith in bon, or in hie nature
and accomplishments, what is his family &boat keeping
Inns in "condition." This point is the secret upon
which the sportsman's pleasure, safety, and credit
rests. In the first place, if we may express mar fancy
about it. we should say, "never turn your hunter Out
to grass, or for what is called a simmer's ruts," if he be
sound, and worth your keeping Round. Grass is a Very
good preparation for • bullock for Smithfield market,
but a very bad tot for a hunter. We believe that
hunters are ruined in constitution oftener than people
believe, by turning them out to grass; and when we see
one in blooming condition going to be turned out for
the summer, our fancy is, it is even betting that he is
never in condition again. Some men may say, "We
turn our hunters out, and they go well," and we answer
" Yes ! in defiance of your system." How much better
they would go if you tried another system you have
not experienced—try! Good reader, let us philosophise
a little with you, let us remind you we do not lose
sight of a truth, that all measures which tend to throw
nature out of her destined course, by "violence," are
bad. Now, we are aware that nature never intended
that • horse should eat a peck, or six quarters of corn
in • day, besides the handful of beans, the brandy or
Madeira as a corker, and be kept in an under oxyge-
nated atmosphere, instead of the pure air ; be clothed,
sweated, and cleaned, tow nothing of the work lie is
sailed upon to perform. If then his nature is, as it
were, to be thus change,d, bow can we eirpect that it
can be done lint by slow degrees?. thie is eletond
nature, but the Wised use implies custom, and custom
,is not established but by length of time. How, then,
can we reasonably expect that a horse turned out to
, gran for the summer, and taken up, full of had flesh,
the first week in August, should be in condition and
I fit to go to hounds by the end of October or the be-
ginning of November. It is thought good luck In
trainers of race-horses if they eon bring their charges
to the postfit to run in eight or ten months. These
animals have only made ground, the evisti emit-face; the
flat sward to skim °t-eh'. A. hunter, howeeer, is ex-
pected by the grasssapproving fraternity (it is but a
poor one we confess) to take double weight, possibly
over most uneven ground, and most formidable leaps,
at this season of the year, and to do all this "safely"
after two months' preparation. Men say, "Oh ! but
we don't push them like race-horses are pushed. We
can ease them if we like." Yes ! this can be done,
but when "is it done ?" If a man has a heart as big as
tom-tit's when hounds are carrying a fine head
and going strong, ease him ; ;sheer easing. Mr.
Tempestuous instead of Mr. Easy, " Look
Squire Isightheele is down—his horse was blown, the
pane if) telling—take the next fence easy. Easy ibis
with a vengeance. Why, Sir, you no sooner saw the
last of Lightheels than in went the spurs, and you
crammed on the pace, and for a wonder (we confess to
your gallantry)—for a wonder you have the heels of
your light friend in the ditch. To return—Nature,
let us iepeat, will not be put out of her course by
violense, and time alone will admit of the change we
wish to produce. Training grooms are well aware of
this, if they are up to their work; and those who
entrust their horses to them have too ofteu °cession
to repent of not having sent them sooner to their
stables, to prevent their being hurried with their work,
and conditien. If then time is so necessary in the
hands of a training groom, with a horse which is sure
to have been in a certain degree of work and pre-
paration previous to his arriving under his care, what
chance can a hunter have, to be in condition, in
November, when he is taken out of • rich pasture in
August? Ask a training-groom to look at a htinter
that is "fit to go," and observe hoe/ he ants, and what
he says. He will first feel his crest,—there is no mis-
taking dry from preen food there—and then laying his
hands flat on his ribs, be will tell you if he likes him :
"This horse is well; his flesh feels as if it had been
taken off, and well put on again." Now, as before, a
horse can be in condition, his bad flesh must come off
him, 88 certain as the horn at the top of his foot must
find its way to the bottom of it, think what time it
must take to accomplish this change, if it is to be I
accomplished, without injury. in proof of what we I
assert look at the generality of sound hunters in the I
month of Marsh. They are then in "condition," just
as there is no further occasion for it, and oh! ye Goths
of owners whe will destroy all this (that nature,
science, and labor have done for you) by taking off the
halter, and turning such animals (fit at that moment
to carry you for your life, or something equally in-
teresting to No. 1,) into a lot of nasty quick grass, in
the which they shall beastialize for months, and acquire
a sort of "oleaginous dropsy." Observe to a friend
at the beginning of a season whose horse has had a
"summer's run," that the-animal is not looking well,
but is all in a sweat, nervous, and out of joint, and
he will tell you with qnite a sage air and tone, "It
is the month of November—a had month for horses.
In a short tinie mine will look as well as any man's."
What • precious excuse this would be for the crack
trainers who have to bring their homes to the post at
the autumn meetings. A horse, if he is a sound one,
and worth the trouble, is to be got into condition by
any given period of the year, if time be allowed to do
it, as should be done. To say nothing of the accidents
to which horses are subject when turned out to grass
at large, as most diseases of horses arise from
plethora. Their being at liberty to gorge themselves
uncontrolled is frequently productive of diseases of
various kinds. Nor indeed can we wonder at it.
Habit, or rather custom, cannot so far overcome
nature as to admit of an animal being kept eight
months in the year in a warm stable, and in an equal
temperature, and the other four to be exposed to the
noon day heat, and midnight cold with impunity.
These extremes cannot fail to produce an increased
action of the arterial system. Inflammations often
attack (perhaps unperceived) those organs which are
most readily influenced by local irritation; hence
blindness, and what is vulgarly and stupidly called •
"grass cough," ending in broken wind, or roaring, are
produced.