The old fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in America in early times.
The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock.

By the term "thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as is sometimes supposed, but only running horses.

All such horses come originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood.

I am informed that climatic and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and nowhere else in the whole world.

Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent, the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited, for any but the best riders.