SIR,--In the article under the above-mentioned heading, published in your issue of the 6th November, Mrs. Power O'Donoghue recommends that horses' tails should not be docked. Dealers, when offering horses for sale, do not usually volunteer any information as to whether the horses have been docked. I wish, therefore, to inform any intending purchasers who may not know how to ascertain whether a horse has been docked, and who may wish to obtain some which have not been disfigured in this manner, that if the dock (that is, the portion of the tail which consists of bones and muscles, &c.) is in its natural state, the hair grows thickly at the end or tip of it, and there is no bare space there; but if it has been shortened by a portion of it being cut off (or docked), there is at the end or tip of it a circular space of about an inch in diameter, entirely bare of hair. When a horse has been docked, the hair of the tail scarcely grows after it has reached to within six or seven inches above the hocks. The hocks of a large horse are about twenty-five inches above the ground. It is a general custom with London dealers to cut the hair of the tail very short before offering a horse for sale, so that it does not come down lower than to a distance of about nine inches above the hocks. The buyer cannot then tell to what length the tail is likely to grow. If customers would refuse to buy horses with the hair of the tail cut short, perhaps the practice in question would be discontinued by the dealers.
SIR,--In your paper of last week I notice a letter on the advisability of ladies on horseback adopting the cross-saddle in place of the side, that is to say, in plain English, ride astride. This I have done abroad when far beyond conventional bondage, and it is incomparably better. Your correspondent points out the evils resulting from the one-sided twisted seat, which a lady now has, and also, in the same paper, the authoress of _Ladies on Horseback_ says how impossible it is with only one foot in the stirrup to rise comfortably to a high trotter. Now I should never have dared to name such a change had it not been thus mooted. Society will shriek out and say, "Woman would be indeed out of place thus." Why? I am sure with a proper dress there is nothing to hurt the extremely proper feelings of the most modest. All who have hunted know that the _very_ short skirted habits at times display, well, say the leg of the fair _equestrienne_ most liberally. Now the dress for the cross-horse style is much the same as a bathing suit, loose Zouave drawers drawn close below the knee, and fastened tightly over the boot at the ankle; a loose tunic, long enough to come almost to the knee when mounted, lightly belted at the waist, a cape falling over the shoulders, not quite to the elbows. This is my attire when free to ride in the _only_ really comfortable way, a foot in each stirrup. Oh, no woman would ever be twisted and packed on to a side saddle again if she could help it, after once enjoying the ease and freedom, as well as complete control of her horse which a man's seat gives.