An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports

There were amusements aplenty for London’s townfolk: boat races, dog fights, the pleasure gardens (Vauxhall and Cremorne), the zoo, museums, railway travel, concerts, opera, music halls (the Alhambra), and the circus. For those eager to extend their horse’s promenade on Rotten Row, Hyde Park, to a gallop, there was the rural sport of deer, wild boar, or fox hunting. Whether Dickens rode regularly or not, he certainly provided a memorable definition of a horse in Hard Times, using Bitzer’s response to Thomas Gradgrind: ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth’.

[Page 497 and facing page from Delabere P. Blaine's An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports, Chapter VI. Includes illustrations entitled "Gone Away! Gone Away!" and "Full Cry".]