One can but speak from experience, and my own is this, that since I learned to ride slow at my fences, I have not had one-third of the falls I used to get before. By riding slow, I mean taking a pull about three or four lengths from the fence, and getting your horse to go steady and _look_. When once you are over, you can go striding away again as fast as you like, and so not lose your "pride of place." Indeed you are far more likely to keep it in that way, than if you gallop over your fences, for before long the _over_ will relapse into _through_, and then it will be only a question of time how soon you will measure your length on the ground. Of course one is bound to fall sometimes, however good the horse, however good the horsewoman. Blind fences, wire, a wide place on the far side, or the sun low so that it catches your horse's eyes, are all pretty well bound to knock you over, and then the main thing is to fall clear. Nowadays we are mercifully seldom hung up, thanks to our safety skirts and safety stirrups, without both of which no woman should, in my opinion, be allowed to hunt. It is wise to minimise the dangers of hunting as much as possible, and I think that in one's clothes and saddlery for hunting, everything should be as plain and as _safe_ as possible. [Illustration: _COMET._ (_Property of Lady Gerard._)] I believe myself in Champion and Wilton's safety stirrup, and dislike hunting on a saddle without it, though some people "crab" them, and say they come off at the wrong moment. If indeed this does happen, the stirrups must require mending, or else the movement of the rider has caused the leather flap which protects the bar to rise, which of course will set the stirrup leather free. But this is obviously not the stirrup's fault. I also like the arrangement on the off flap, so that you can tighten your own girths, for it is nonsense to say that women's girths should "never need tightening." They need it far more than men's as a rule, and if you can pull them up a hole or two after a gallop, yourself, it is a great convenience, and much better than making some unfortunate man, or his groom, fumble about at a buckle covered with mud below the horse's body, as on other saddles.