el at once. Throw a
rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.

An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.

Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard
condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft
one for weeks.

In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs,
but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition,
there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called
"hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and
watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow
across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if
caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were
infrequently saved.

Under the traditions of English fox-hunting--traditions the strictness
of which can hardly be exaggerated--"hilltopping" is a more than
doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is
taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on
first-class hunting regions.

The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old
fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate
the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in
America in early times.

The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term
"thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as
is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come
originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed
has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of
centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic
and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason
peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these
conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and
nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest
type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the
more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though
half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent,
the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited,
for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought
out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very
fast