Hunting, by the duke of Beaufort and M. Morris

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 Excerpt: ...is, as we have seen, susceptible of a double interpretation; so is that other saying, a good horse cannot be of a bad shape. A horse may be perfect to a hair's breadth in every proportion, yet thoroughly worthless as a hunter; on the other hand, many first-rate hunters have been very queerly shaped, 'rum 'uns to look at, but devils to go,' as the old song says. Mr. Sidney gives in his book a portrait of a famous hunter, Unknown, who had carried the thirteen stone of his master, Mr. John Bennett, for many seasons with the Quorn and Pytchley without a fall, and was declared by Sir Richard Sutton, then hunting the former pack, to be one of the best animals he ever saw cross Leicestershire. If the portrait tell truth, no man certainly would have bought Unknown for his shape, to say nothing of the fact that he was under fifteen hands high. One of the first points a buyer looks at in a horse required to carry weight is the back. When the nature of the horse's anatomy is considered, and the position of the saddle, it will be clear that a back disproportionately long is, to say the least, not the one thing needful. Yet Whyte-Melville tells us that the best hunter owned by each of the three heaviest men he ever saw ride perfectly straight to hounds had that fault. These were Sober Robin, owned by Mr. Richard Gurney, who rode twenty stone; a bay horse belonging to Mr. Wood, of Brixworth Hall, who was no lighter, and used to vow his horse 'had as many vertebrae as a crocodile;' and a black mare, belonging to Colonel Wyndham, at least three inches too long behind the saddle. 'I remember also,' he adds, 'seeing the late Lord Mayo ride fairly away from a Pytchley field, no easy task between Lilbourne and Cold Ashby, on a horse that, except for its enormous depth of girth...