leaping head are also questions of weight. Hence if we
require a saddle for rough and dangerous work like hunting, we must not
entertain the ridiculous idea of having a light saddle, so that it may
look particularly smart. A fair weight for a side-saddle is one-seventh
of the weight of the rider, that is to say, two pounds for every stone
she weighs, with a minimum weight of 18 lbs.

SHAPE OF THE SEAT OF A SIDE-SADDLE.

The level-seated fad which some fashionable saddlers try to impress on
their inexperienced customers is an absurdity from a hunting point of
view, because no one out of an idiot asylum would care to sit for
several hours on a perfectly level surface, whether it was a saddle or a
chair. The discomfort which such an attempt would entail, is due to the
fact that the nature of our anatomy requires a certain amount of dip in
that portion of the seat upon which most of the weight falls. The
level-seated idea is purely theoretical, because no saddles are made in
conformance with it. For hunting we must have comfort, without, of
course, any undue violation of smartness. Besides, a certain amount of
dip in the seat, similar to that shown in Fig. 16, is an aid to
security. A cutback pommel (Fig. 11) improves the look of a side-saddle
without diminishing the rider's grip. The seat on the near side should
be eased off, so as to allow the rider's left leg to get close to the
horse; and the near side, close to the cantle, should be made a little
higher than the off side, in order to correct any tendency there may be
to sit too much over on the near side.

The saddles which I used on Romance (Fig. 4), and Freddie (Fig. 7),
about fifteen years ago, were not called "level seated," but we may see
that they are quite as neat and smart as those of the present time,
which fact shows that very little change has been made in the shape of
side-saddles since the eighties.

THE SADDLE MUST FIT THE RIDER.

The two great points in this requirement are that the upper crutch and
leaping head should be in a suitable position, and the saddle
sufficiently long, so as to be about a couple of inches clear of the
back of the rider's seat. The right position of the upper crutch and
leaping head can be determined only by experiment. If the tree is so
short as to allow any undue weight to fall on the cantle, the horse will
naturally run the risk of getting a sore back. The height of the upper
crutch and the length of the leaping hea