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Owing to difference in customs of the two nations, such horses as the English hunters are not the most desirable for use in this country, and the system of training adopted to suit the animals to the requirements of English gentlemen, are seldom called into requisition here. Still, as we desire our work to be as complete as possible, and as the method of training is interesting, though it may prove useful to but few of our readers, we introduce it. We take this spirited description from “A Holiday on Horseback,” from the pen of an English writer whose name is not given:

“A light built, gaylooking thoroughbred was passing into a paddock for a lesson in jumping over a swivel bush hurdle. Without spur or whip, the rider—the horsebreaker’s son—rode the mare steadily at the fence, and she went over without touching a top twig, clearing nine yards in the leap. ‘The great thing, sir, is to bring them into workmanlike ways; not to be fussy and flurried at their fence, so as to take off at the right spot.’ Then he went on to inform us that hunters should be carefully handled at a very early age, if they are intended to become temperate and handy. They may be ridden gently by a light weight with good hands, at three years old, over small fences. At four they ought to be shown hounds, but they should only be allowed to follow them at a distance, after the fences are broken down, for if you put them to large leaps at that age they are apt to get alarmed and never make steady fencers afterward. Above all things, avoid getting them into boggy ditches, or riding them at brooks; but they should be practiced at leaping small ditches, if possible, with water in them, the rider facing them at a brisk gallop, for this gives a horse confidence and courage. The old custom of teaching colts to leap, standing, over a bar is now obsolete, and they are taught to become timber jumpers simply by taking timber as it comes across the country—the present rate of hounds gives no time for standing leaps. The circular bar, however, is not a bad thing if in a good place and well managed. Every description of fence that your hunter is likely to meet with should be placed within a prescribed circle on soft ground, the man who holds him standing on a stage in the center. Another man, following the colt with a whip, obliges him to clear his fences at a certain pace, and in a very short time a good tempered colt will go at his jumps with pleasure.