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INSTINCT IN JUMPING RACE HORSES. The collapse of ltuliio. the Aniericnn caiuliilntc in Ike lccriit mini ITttlnMl. bai c-iuscil Mae discus sion us to why hursts full without any apparent x.ison. Tin- Aiu-iicMii iiia-cr sliivwtil l;i-t year when he won that he was a «o m1 fencer, anil -this time he was well u| with the mail brigade when lie li.nk the header and landed in a heap ever the water .lump. English accounts of the race say that he came at the obstacle with ran- dash, and just behind Judas, the leader, and some of the critics have since In en at a loss to know whv lie came down so suddenly. Afier the harae re-aiued his | ins it was found that one of his fetlocks was done for and then the theory got wind that he had broken down earlier iu the race. How a hotae could manage to run as Kubio ilid to tlie last fem- if broken down is hard to understand, bo the more cousi rvative are content to ioceot the conclusion that the breakdown occurred at the take oil and not before. Wli.it realtor caused the fall will never be accurately known, hut it is li.irdlv poasible that Kubio will ever ■gala luriin it Liverpool. The going was except iou-ally heavy aid a. bled to this was the fact that he carried pfehteee pounds more than last year. This perhaps tned him so tliat he cracked in an instant. Those who make it a studv are id the opinion that tlie horse very lunch resemble* the human betas when it .Mimes to accidents. Buose bocaea are very easily brousM down, while others shew wonderful iiislitc ■; in k cping their legs. In connection with tills vetv raei — the irand Nat ioual —there are two i.i. table instances of instinctivcicss. the latest case being that of this years winner, l.utteur ill., and the ether Cloister, the tirsi horse to carry top weight successfully past tile post. At the fence before Valentines Brook l.utteur III. nearly landed on top of a falbu horse, but while in midair the French horse swerved sideways like a cat and iust grazed tlie fallen animal. Iarfre-nient. the jockey, said atPrward that neither himself nor his mount saw the -lunger till thev were half way over the jump, and had not l.utteur 111. the instinct to avoid the fallen bone, he would rarely bare I n sent sprawling. Cloister won in 1803 with IT.", pounds i!i the saddle, and as Dollerv. his- rider. explalaed afterward, he let tin- MK chaaer take the course and fences his own wav. Ill the carlv stae of the race Ilollery tried to place Cloister at a couple of the jumps, but the horse would put in an extra stride of his own before taking oft. -So I said to him." said Ilollery. "all right, old man. jump them raw way: you know nunc about it than I d". I dare say." and thence onward Cloister did not put a wrouir foot nvi r anv of tile fences. one of the keenest bulge* of liorsetb sit in the world today is the Hun. Charles Coventry, and what he has to say on why horses fall is highly interest in;;: "Writing willi the knowledge gained by praetieal e|ierieiice both as a rider and trainer of steeple h.isers. 1 will endeavor to petal out tin1 chances of falls and mistakes that occur in a race and why lliey occur. "It is known that as a general rule a fall over hurdles is attended with worst- results to a jockev 11 an a. tall ore* leiicis. for tin- reason *it is the ... :;.... ; ills.." and i. i the last pace thai makes the had fall in most cases. Now. uhv is it that h"is,s fall- In answer I may say thai then are a great many reasons, such as their belag insiilli-mhmIIv schooled, betas tired, betas hadlv ridden. betas interfered with at a tonoe. etc.. and I will try to describe each in turn. "We will take the steeplechaser as he conns to Hi. bauds of the tiaiuer: he mav have been liouglit out of a fiat race stable or he mav have been bred and put aside for chasing. The tirst thtea to do with a chaser after getting him ready for it is lo school linn, and schooling lias a meat deal to do with whether a horse lalls or not. and it is most essential in every wav. Different trainer- have different ideas and methods of schooling, and I do not orotic e to criticise those methods or set up one :igai"s| the other: the horse has to lie schooled anil tile trainer docs it his own way. "Some horses take nattirallv to jumping and there is very little ditlicully in schooling the*, tin tho other hand, there are certain horses who dislike lumping very much, and th.se are the kind that gtre a trainer most anxiety. lie has to gala their confidence, licit them kindly and leach them aot lo be afraid: it is patience that is reqaired with this stamp of horse. I think one can say that the t.mglil horse, if such I may call him. is never so good a chaser as the natural tamper, being a slower and more careful fencer, but I think thai as a rule be does not tall as often as tlie natural iiininer when be has iu en thomuglily schooled. rnlnrtunatoly nowadays the majority of fences da not reasdre as much pimping as in the old days, and 1 he result is that tlie horses are not so well schooled as they used P. be. A trainer partes a nice. free. bold, natural jumper does no; want to sicken him of jump I iiir by constantly schooHns him at home, ao s. mis him .ait to compete in a race, ahd as teas as that horse is pteettes sinall untile up fences, he will do all right, but over a coarse like Href pool, the result would lie disastrous. A natural jumner daes not lire so easilv over fences as a tainrht juniper. "A horse baring been schooled and betas; r.a.l.v for an i aj.ai.i lai al we can deal with what happens in a ra.e. but shore all we must recoiled two thinus -thai the Confidence nins! he entire between horse and rider, or grief is bound to come, and that a horse dislikes falling quite is much as his jockey does. When a horse is really tired he has not much control oyer himself and is going a great deal slower than at any other part of his race and his jockey is probably cillin upon him for an extra effort, say betweea tlie last twa fences. He responds Miar it to the call made span him. hut owing lo the Ilk of control that he has over himself, together with perhaps the fact that by his jo-keys efforts he is a lit lie unbalanced, be meets his fence wrong and the invariable loss .■curs. •Now. die danger in his fall is that he falls slov.h and the risk to his Jockey Is that tin horse mav fall ..n him. ine baa seen bocaea fall like this time ami time and lie like logs on the urouui! and sometimes with the Jockeys teg or hady pinned under them. A fall from a tired horse, even though you fall char, very often ends in disaster, for it pr.olial.ly occurs at the end of a race or toward the end of it. and the risk then to the jockey is of the other horses in tin- rear of him jamping on him. One of tie- first rules a jockey should bear in mind in this case is that he should retain his recumbent position until he is sure that the other horses are past Mm. I have s. en jockeys get up and get Mocked down again for their pates, which is sure to mean severe Injury: and if they are knocked down thev may cause other horses to sweive and s.i lose their chance of winning the race. This rule does not of coarse apply te a fall early in the race when the horse is not tired and the jockey retains his hold on tie- rein-. "Tired and beaten baraea must on no account be driven a: liieir fences, or the n suit is hound to be a fall; thev must be held well together and balanced, ami this is tin- true art of Joekeyahip. This takes me to the remark I made about bad riding Which veiv often I auses horses to make luistak. -. 1 do not iu anv wav Wish to east aspersions on OSI presenl steeplechase jockeys, hut there are very tea Who do not occasionally make mistakes, and my present remarks refer more to the younger Jockeys and beginners than to the older hands. Tanas Jockeys, and even some of the older riders, seen to 11. ink that they should follow their leader exactly and lie in his tracks, thus preventing their own mounts from seeing their fences properly*, and the result i- disaster, either liecuusc their mounts take »T too -»in or gallop right into the fence. A raajag horse will frequently take off when mother .i.e.. even when lying directly iu rear of him: this is not tlie horses fault, and the jockey has no one but himself to blame if he gets a nasty spill. Then, .-main, some jockeys can never resist llllllni their mounts into their femes, and in tltrlnjT this often gel tliein in two minds as to when and where they have to take off: the result is a mistake, and if tin-horse does not fall the probability Is that the Jockey fines, Ixcause the odds are that the horse hits Defence yerv hard and the ioekev is himself onhalanced at tin- time. A duffer can easily hi lag a horse in grief, lmt no one can keep him up if he has once ~ ne. "The whip, too in inexperienced hands has rerj often is-, n the cause of brtatttajc ■ horse down at tin-last fence, for unless; a horse is hit at tlie right uiouieut lie probably cuau-ca his tea and eo inac curately measures his distance from the fence and makes a mistake iu consequence. Very often a horse is brought down through the interference of another horse and jockey jumping on him. or boring him out. so that he has to jump sideways and da things of that description. A loose harae is constantly responsible for falls, as he will stick to another and so interfere with him. "Horses frequently overjump themselves, antra, especially young horses, through inexticriencc. or. perhaps, when they are n bit tired, through a keen desire to get to the other side, and fall in eonse Picnee. In this case tile fall for the jockey is slight, always provided that no further contretemps occurs, such as betas struck into or jumped on by as-other horse: but the fall to the horse himself is very often had, as lie is apt to strain himself in the locks or across the loins or get a bad overreach. A young horse will frequently Scotch at a fence, with the result that he probably gets too close, is all aboard, and so ceases to grief. Sometimes a horse takes oft* too soon, landing on tlie top of tin-fence, or only just getting his foreleg* over, and drags his hind legs after him. so that they refuse to do the service of propelling him forward — the result a nice light fall. Again, he may get loo close to his Hit and breast it as lie takes off and turn a regular somersault, when he mav fall on bis jei key and damage him seriously. "Thin there is another cause of spills, and that is by reason of what one may call tsul fences. I!v this I mean fences built on bad ground and improp erlv constructed. I know of several on different race coarsen that to look at seem all right, hut there are always a great inanv falls at them. This I take to .show that there must he something wrong with the angle at which they are built or on the takeoff or lauding side. Sloppy, bad going in front of a fence causes horses to slip, and having no chance .to regain their hnlance before taking- off blunder through them. Bad going, like ridge and furrow in front of a fence, often puts a horse off ami lie docs not jump so clcau and well. Having nunc from a bit "f good going into deep ground before a fence and things of this description all lead to lint a horse off and add to the chances af a fall. I am for different variety of fences ami approach as in tlie old days of natural courses, hut now we have our enclosed courses lieautifullv kept, the gains as even as a billiard table and the fences all alike. Horses get used to this Style of going and when they conic to small local meetings they meal different going and indifferently built fences an 1 th.v are liable to fall. "Improperly built fences are very common and are of several varieties. I have seen fences built so that they lean toward a horse instead of being upright or leaning away. tuanl rails that are often set too near the ditch often cause accidents: guard rails that are too high, so that a horse cannot ac-rorately measure his distance; fences built very tliiu at the tog. with thick bases, and Ixiund to gather hf rails often bring horses down, for they think thev can chance them — these are all instances of Had fences. ■•okkI jumping naturally plavs the most impor teat part in a steeplechase. A horse that can gain a length in each fence is s inanv lengths to the good facing the w inning peat, and it is for this reason that though one horse mav he able to beat another easilv two miles i-n the Hat. vet over fences their positions are reversed."
