or Horbox, Jeremiah, born 1619, at Liverpool, died 1641. See Fourth Preliminary Dissertation.

**HORSE.**

The Horse is a distinct genus belonging to the order of *Pachydermata*, Cuv., and in himself the most serviceable of all quadruped animals, and ranks with the greyhound as the swiftest of those brought under the dominion of man. Notwithstanding these high qualifications, ancient history informs us that in the primitive ages of the world the ass was used in preference to him, not only as a mere beast of burthen, but for the purpose of conveying from place to place persons of the highest distinction. This, however, may be satisfactorily accounted for. Previously to the art of horsemanship being known, the ass, a superior race of animal perhaps to that generally found in Europe, was more easily managed than the horse, and better suited to the kind of food usually met with for his support. He was, in fact, found to answer every purpose of horses, until mankind increased in numbers and in wealth, when the complicated interests that were the result brought their services into use, and they were trained to the art of war. But another reason may be given for the late introduction of horses. Their use was interdicted by the Almighty in the early ages of the world; first, lest his favourite people, the Israelites, should be led to idolatry by carrying on commerce with Egypt; secondly, by their dependence on a well-appointed cavalry, they might cease to trust in the promised aid of Jehovah; and, thirdly, that they might not be tempted to extend their dominion by such means, and then, by mixing with idolatrous nations, cease in time to be that distinct and separate people which it was His intention they should be, and without which the prophecies relative to the Messiah could not be fully accomplished. Thus, in the Book of Psalms, the horse commonly appears only on the side of the enemies of God's people; and so entirely unaccustomed to the management of him were the Israelites at the period of their signal defeat of the Philistines and other idolatrous nations, that David, their commander and king, caused the greater part of the horses of the cavalry prisoners to be cut down. In the reign of Solomon, however, a cavalry force was established, but to no great extent.

In the infant state of all nations, indeed, we can readily account for the restrictive use of horses. A great deal of land that might be applied to the production of human food is requisite for their maintenance in all countries; and, in hot and sterile ones, the camel answered better, and was found ready at hand. It is true they were used in the armies of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which were not considered as complete without them. In Greece they were not so numerous; but in a war with the Italic Gauls the Romans are said to have had no less than 70,000 horse and 700,000 foot to attack their formidable enemies. The army of Xerxes, when reviewed by him at Dorsica, in Thrace, after it had passed the Hellespont, is reported by Herodotus, contemporary with him, to have contained 80,000 horse; but the judicious reader will be inclined to make considerable abatements from the boasted amount of that celebrated but ill-fated expedition, resting, as it does, entirely on the authority of Grecian writers, who represented facts in the light the most unfavourable to their enemies, and the most glorious to their own gallant countrymen.

As in the scale of excellence the horse ranks first of all animals coming under the denomination of cattle, and, as Buffon justly says of him, "possesses, along with grandeur of stature, the greatest elegance and proportion of parts of all quadrupeds," it is not a matter of surprise that, as an image of motive vigour, he should have been the subject of the chisel and the pencil of the first artists in the world, or that the description of him by the pen should have been not considered as unworthy the greatest writers of antiquity. But it is only in his native simplicity, in those wild and extensive plains where he was originally produced, that we can form an adequate idea of this noble animal. It is here that he disdains the assistance of man, which only tends to servitude; and it is to a description of his release from this servitude, his regaining his natural liberty, that we are indebted for two of the finest similes of the immortal Greek and Roman epic bards. The return of Paris, with Hector, to the battle of Troy, is thus given in the sixth book of the Iliad:

"And Virgil is considered to have even exceeded Homer in that splendid passage in the eleventh book of the Aeneid, where Turnus, turning out fully accoutred for the fight, is compared to a horse that has just broken loose from his stall:

"Qualls, ubi abruptis fugit praesepia vinculis, Tandem liber equus, campoque porosus aperto, Aut ille in pastas armentaque tendit equorum, Aut, ansuetus aquae perfandi flammeo note, Emelat, aeratile fremit cervicibus altis. Lurarius; iudicium jube per colla, per armos."

It is impossible, at this distance of time, to fix upon the native country of the horse, as he has been found in various forms and of various sizes in every region of the Old World. The difference in size is easily accounted for. The origin of all animals of the same species was doubtless the same in the beginning of time, and it is chiefly climate that has produced the change we perceive in them. Warmth being congenial to his constitution, and cold naturally injurious to him, he is produced in the most perfect form, and in the greatest vigour, when subject to the influence of the one, and not only diminutive, but misshapen and comparatively worthless, when exposed to the evils of the other. Buffon, however, is wrong in making the horse indigenous to Arabia, as is clearly proved by a reference to the Sacred Writings. In the reign of Saul horse-breeding had not yet been introduced into Arabia; for, in a war with some of the Arabian nations, the Israelites got plunder in camels, sheep, and asses, but still no horses. Even at the time when Jerusalem was conquered and first destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, Arabia appears to have been without horses, as the Tyrians brought theirs from Armenia. That the earliest available uses of the active powers of horses was adopted by the Egyptians, the same authority satisfies us; for we read in the third chapter of Genesis that when Joseph carried his father's remains from Egypt to Canaan "there went up with him both chariots and horsemen." About 150 years afterwards, the horse constituted the principal strength of the Egyptian army; Pharaoh having pursued the Israelites with "six hundred chosen chariots, and with all the chariots of Egypt." The earliest period now alluded to was 1650 years before the birth of Christ; and 1450 years before that event, the horse was so far naturalized in Greece that the Olympic Games were instituted, including chariot and horse races.

The origin of the native horse of our own country is now merely a question of historical interest, the discussion of which would not lead to much practical benefit. That experiments, founded on the study of his nature and properties, which have from time to time been made to improve the breed, and bring the different varieties to the perfection in which we now find them, have succeeded, is best confirmed by the fact of the high estimation in which the horses of Great Britain are held in all parts of the civilized world; and it is not too much to assert that, although the cold, humid, and variable nature of our climate, is by no means favourable to the production of these animals in their very best form, we have, by great care, and by our attention to breeding, high feeding, and good grooming, with consequent development of the muscles, brought them to the highest state of perfection of which their nature is susceptible. They may be classed under the following heads, and treated of individually, viz., the race-horse; the hunter; the hackney, for various purposes; the charger; the troop horse; the coach, chariot, and gig horse; and the draught or cart horse.

THE RACE-HORSE.

Although we may safely pronounce that the native breed of English horses, however esteemed for other purposes, could not race, in the present acceptation of that word, yet it is equally obvious that they formed the parent stock of the renowned English racer. The first step to improve it by a cross with Eastern blood appears to have been taken by James I., who gave the enormous sum (in those days) of £500 for an Arab stallion, which, however, the Duke of Newcastle, in his work on horsemanship (great authority at that time), wrote down on account, chiefly, of his comparatively diminutive size. At the Restoration, however, there appears to have been a tolerably good breed of horses in England, which Charles II. improved by an importation of Barbs and Turks, whose blood was engrafted on the original stock, already very considerably ameliorated by the services of a stallion called Place's White Turk (imported by Oliver Cromwell's Master of the Horse, who bore that name), and afterwards by those of the Helmsley Turk, followed by Fairfax's Morocco Barb. The change was at this time so visible, that the Lord Harleigh of that day expressed his fears lest it might be carried to such an extreme as to extirpate the strong and useful horse, which, perhaps, the majority of his countrymen were well satisfied with before. In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, however, the first great trump turned up to secure future success. This was a stallion called Darley's Arabian, purchased in the Levant by a Yorkshire merchant of that name, although without any real attestation of his pedigree or country. The prejudice against Arabians and other eastern horses, the effect of the Duke of Newcastle's anathema against them, having now for the most part subsided, a good deal of their blood had been infused into the mares of that day, when another stallion, whose services were still more signal, accidentally made his appearance. We allude to the Godolphin Arabian, as he was called, purchased out of a cart in Paris, and consequently of uncertain caste, but evidently the horse of the desert; who, as will be hereafter shown, may be said to have won the game. Although at first thought so meanly of as only to be used as a teazer, yet, fortunately for the turf, he lived twenty years after his services became notorious by the accident of his being the sire of a capital racer out of a mare which the stallion to which he was teazer refused to cover; and, strange to say, no very superior racehorse has appeared in England for many years that cannot be traced to his blood. The success of this horse was much facilitated by the lucky coincidence of his arrival in England at a critical time; that is to say, when the stock from Darley's horse, and the several Arabs, Barbs, and Turks, together with the royal mares imported by Charles II., had been "crossed" (as the term is) on each other, and had produced mares worthy to be the channel of imparting his own transcendant qualities to posterity. Taking it for granted, then, that the English race-horse is descended from Arabian, Turkish, and African (Barb) blood; and also taking into consideration the various peculiarities in the form and power of each of those kinds, requiring modification of shape, qualities, and action suited to the purposes for which they were intended, it cannot be denied that a task of no ordinary difficulty was imposed on the English horse-breeders, and that they have executed that task with a masterly hand. If other countries furnished the blood, England has made the race-horse.

With the exception of one Eastern horse, called the Wellesley Arabian, the grand sire of a winner of the Oaks in 1826, also of Dandizette, who ran second for that stake in 1823, and one or two more good runners, the English turf has benefited nothing during the last three-quarters of a century from the importation of foreign blood. The fact is, that having once gotten possession of the essential constitutional parts necessary to form the race-horse (and which will be described hereafter), we ourselves have (by a superior knowledge of the animal and the means of availing ourselves of his capabilities, not only by rearing and training, but by riding him also) brought him to a pitch of excellence which will not admit of further improvement. Superior as is the air of the desert (which is said to be so free from vapours that the brightest steel is not affected with rust if exposed to it for a night) to that of our humid and ever-varying climate, which, especially in Ireland, is said to produce blindness in horses; and propitious as it must be to animals found, as the horse was found, in the greatest perfection when reared in it; yet were the finest Eastern horse that could be procured brought to the starting-post at Newmarket, with the advantage of English training to boot, he would have no chance, at any weight or for any distance, with even a second-rate English race-horse. They will not bear what jockeys term "squeezing" in the last fifty yards of a race, and lose all heart in an instant. The late Mr Atwood was the last racing man who ran half-bred Arabs in England, and he scarcely ever won a race with them from this cause.

Although we have spoken in disparagement of horses of the East as racers, upon the same terms with those of our own breeding, we are willing to allow them the merit of being the parent stock of all our racing blood; as it is quite evident the indigence of our own country, or of those European ones which approximate to it, would never have produced the sort of race-horse now seen on the British turf. The nature and character, indeed, of the horse of the desert, are peculiarly adapted to an animal which, like the race-horse, is called upon to put its physical powers to the severest test to which nature, aided by art, can submit. In the first place, the Arabian horse possesses a firmness of leg and sinew unequalled by any other in the world. This excellence, which he owes to climate, arises from his having larger muscles and smaller bone than other horses have; muscles and sinews being the sole powers of acting, and on them depend the lasting qualities of an animal going at the top of his speed. Bones being the weight to be lifted, serve only to extend the parts; and it is evident that such as are small but highly condensed, like those of the deer and the horse of the desert, are, by occupying less space and containing less weight, more easily acted upon by muscular force than such as are large and porous, and for a greater duration of time, without fatiguing the acting powers. But the excellence of the Arabian horse, or horse of the desert, does not end with his highly condensed bone, and flat and wiry leg, so much esteemed by the sportsman. All the muscles and fibres of his frame are driven into closer contact than those of any other breed; and, by the membranes and ligaments being composed of a finer and thinner substance, he possesses the rare quality of union of strength with lightness, so essential to the endurance of fatigue in all quick motions. He thus moves quicker and with more force, by reason of the lightness and solidity of the materials of which his frame is composed; and when to these qualifications are added the peculiar and deer-like elegance of his form, and extraordinary share of muscular power for his inches, he appears to furnish all the requisites of the race-horse on a small scale.

It is worth inquiring into the reason of the improvement of the horse of the desert, and indeed of all the countries of the East, not advancing towards perfection, as that of our own breed has done. No doubt it was intended that we should improve upon animal nature as we improve our own, and nowhere has the attempt been so successful as upon our varieties of domestic cattle; but the horse of the desert now, if he has not retrograded in his good qualities, is the same animal that he was nearly two centuries back. With the exception of the Wellesley Arabian, said to have been bred in Persia (but the assertion is unaccompanied by proof), which measured 15 hands 2 inches high, all the rest that have been imported have been little better than Galloways, which must be attributed to two causes—first, the want of being forced, as our own horses are, in their colthood, by high keep; and, secondly, by adhering too closely to the indigenous breed, or that whose blood is unmixed, by which means it has dwindled. Accurate observers must have noticed that the greater part of the horses brought to this country as Barbs and Arabians have exhibited a palpable deficiency in the points contributing to strength, and the want of general substance is apparent at first sight. It is true that, of late years, their estimation has so diminished in this country that no great pains have been taken to procure stallions of the highest caste, and scarcely any mares have been imported, and several of those sent over have been accompanied by very unsatisfactory pedigrees. We are, however, inclined to think that, as the immediate descendants of such horses are found quite inefficient as race-horses, and but few of the second or third generation have turned up trumps, unless as a rational experiment, the breeding of race-horses from Arabians is at an end.

We have reason to believe, that the best use to be made of Eastern horses, would be for the production of the English hunter, by the best-shaped hunting mares, nearly thorough-bred. By the help of the dam, and our present improved system of keeping young horse-stock, there would be little fear of the produce not coming to a good size, even in the first generation, as it is, for the most part, the property of those horses to beget stock larger than themselves; but by crossing the female produce in the second with our large thorough-bred horses, hunters for heavy weights might be looked for, with every prospect of success. We know that the virtue of the blood, or constituent parts, of the horse that was no racer (Marske, the sire of Eclipse, for example), has produced a racing son, by acquiring proper formation of parts from the dam; and if to the fine form of the English hunter, could be added the firmness of leg and sinew for which the Eastern horse is so conspicuous, but in which the English hunter is too often deficient, in conjunction with the larger muscles, more highly condensed bone, and well-known powers of endurance of the Eastern horse, not omitting his action, which is generally first-rate, but of which a proper judgment could be formed previously to the choice of the stallion, a great improvement upon our present race of hunters would be effected; and all such as were known to be thus bred, would meet a ready sale. It is a well known fact, that some of the most brilliant hunters England ever produced, were got by Arabian stallions; and one, by Lord Clive's Arabian, was decidedly the best horse in Leicestershire, in Mr Meynell's day, over every description of country. He was the property of the late Mr Childe, of Kinlet Hall, Shropshire, who is said to have been the first to introduce the present very spirited style of riding. after bounds. Of late years, there have been some very good hunters of this breed in the royal hunt. A powerful Toorokman stallion would not, we think, fail in getting hunters out of good English mares. That breed is the largest of any of the Eastern horses, owing to being reared on better land.

One word more on the subject of the Eastern horse, as connected with the English turf. Owing to the doubts and uncertainties that hang over the pedigrees and countries of the most celebrated stallions and mares which laid the foundation of our present breed of racers, it is impossible to determine to which individual breed, whether to the Turkish, the Barb, the Arabian, or the Persian, are the greater advantages derived from them to be attributed. They appear to us to be pretty equally divided. To the Byerly Turk we are indebted for the Herod blood (sire of Highflyer); to the Godolphin Arabian, said to be a Barb, for the Matchem blood, the stoutest of any; to the Darley Arabian (the sire of Flying Childers), for the Eclipse blood; and to the Wellesley Arabian, believed to be a Persian horse, to the only real advantage gained to English race-horses, by a foreign cross, in later years. It must, however, be observed, that the most famous horses of the last century, such as Childers, Old Crab, Eclipse, and King Herod, did not appear on the turf before they were five years old; which leads us to suppose that the failure of horses subsequently bred, as they themselves were bred, from Oriental blood, and trained at an early age, may, in great part, be attributed to the fact of the immediate produce of such horses requiring more time to come to maturity, or even to a certain degree of maturity, than those, like our present breed of race-horses, further removed from such blood; and the cause may be attributed to climate. It is reasonable to suppose that the produce of stallions and mares bred in the torrid zone, would come slower to perfection in a damper and colder country than it would have done in its own; and we may infer from this, that in proportion as horses were brought earlier to the post, and races shortened in distance, Eastern blood got into disrepute.

In Great Britain, from the highly cultivated knowledge of the mechanical structure of living bodies, with the junction of best shapes, although but for racing, this knowledge would have been comparatively in its infancy, the horse has arrived at the highest state of perfection of which his nature is capable; and in whatever country and in whatever climate his racing powers are put to the test, he has scarcely found a rival, excepting under very disadvantageous circumstances. It is true his lasting qualities were doubted, and he was challenged to rebut the charge; and the following was the result. On the 4th of August 1825, two second-rate English racers, Sharper and Mina, contended against the most celebrated Cossack horses from the Don, the Black Sea, and the Ural, in a race of the cruel length of 47 miles. At starting, Sharper and Mina ran away with their riders more than a mile, and up a steep hill, when the latter horse broke down, and pulled up. Half the distance was run in an hour and forty minutes. In the last half, only one of the Cossack horses was able to contend with Sharper, who notwithstanding every foul advantage was taken by changing the weight, and dragging along his opponent by a rope, won his race in gallant style, performing the distance in two hours and forty-eight minutes. At starting, the English horses carried three stone more weight than the Cossacks; and, during the latter half of the race, the one Cossack who remained in it was ridden by a mere child. Every trial over the desert, no matter what the distance, during 1826-55, between English and Eastern horses, has been attended with precisely the same results.

From the great export trade to the Continent of English horses, and particularly those of full blood, occupiers of land cannot turn their attention to a much surer source of profit than that of breeding horses, provided they go judiciously to work. But, unfortunately for the speculators in this branch of rural economics, too much is left to chance and experiment, and thus horse-breeding becomes absolutely a matter of speculation, instead of a matter of judgment. It is true, those noblemen and gentlemen whose studs have become eminent on the turf cannot be included in this charge, unless they are extremely prejudiced in favour of a particular sire; but even with the benefit of great experience, and various other advantages, the utmost exercise of their judgment is required to ensure even a prospect of success against such a field as they have to contend with. Having said this, we will lay down a few practical rules for breeding and rearing the various kinds of horses now used in Great Britain, commencing, as before stated, with that of the race-horse.

In the first place, it may be observed there has been a great deal of discussion in various publications on sporting, but to very little purpose, on the much agitated question, "What constitutes full blood, or what is termed a thoroughbred horse?" We consider this question as very easily decided; the term "thorough-bred horse" merely implying one that can be traced through the stud-book, by sire and dam, to any Eastern stallion, or to what were called the royal mares, imported by Charles II., as they, together with two or three of the first imported stallions, form the ne plus ultra of all racing pedigrees. As to the assertion, that for a horse to claim the title of thorough-bred it is necessary he should be of pure Oriental descent, it cannot for a moment be supported; as, independently of the fact, that only two mares are stated in the Stud-Book, or elsewhere, on authority, to have been imported into England in the early days of racing, it is well known that the first British race-horses were those of British breed, changed, ameliorated, and at last perfected by the admixture of Eastern blood, and judicious crossing afterwards.

The effect of what is called crossing blood is as follows: The first cross gives one-half, or 50 per cent.; the second 75 per cent.; the third 87½ per cent.; and the fourth 93½ per cent. In sheep, after this, if the ewes have been properly selected, the difference in the wool between the original stock and the mixed breed is scarcely perceptible; but with the horse, the breeder must not stop here, if he means to produce a race-horse; and a curious fact is stated respecting sheep, on the authority of the Count Velfheim, of Brunswick, an extensive breeder of that species of stock. "It has frequently occurred to me," says he, "that rams, which, after an improvement of four or five descents, have rivalled all the visible qualities of the purest Merinos, when employed in propagation, have got very ordinary lambs, and consequently they are not fit to be used for breeding. On the other hand, a fact may be stated, wherein after a very opposite cross, pure blood, with evident improvement upon the original stock, was procured on the eighth descent. The late Lord Oxford, very celebrated for his greyhounds, finding them degenerating in courage, crossed his best bitches, with a bull-dog. The result was, after several recrossings with pure blood, that breed of greyhounds for which he was so eminently distinguished. The immediate descendants, however, of the Eastern horses, have, almost without an exception, proved so deficient of late years, that our breeders will no more have recourse to them than the farmer would to the natural oat, which is little better than a weed, to produce a sample that should rival that of his neighbours in the market."

Much speculation has also been indulged in as to the effect of close affinity in breeding the race-horse, or what is called breeding in-and-in; a system which has eminently succeeded in breeding cattle, and also with the late Lord Egremont's racing stud. Beginning with Flying Childers, several of our very best racers have been very closely bred; and it certainly appears reasonable that, as like is said to produce like, if we have high form and superior organization in an own brother and sister, that high form and superior organization would be very likely to be continued to their incestuous produce. In a work called Observations on Breeding for the Turf, published several years back by Nicholas Hankay Smith, who resided a long time among the Arabs, the author gives his opinion that colts bred in-and-in show more blood in their heads, are of better form, and fit to start with fewer sweats than others; but when the breed is continued incestuous for three or four crosses, the animal, he thinks, degenerates. By breeding in-and-in, however, he does not insist upon the necessity of breeding from brother and sister, or putting a mare to her own sire, or the sire to her own dam; but after the first cross, to return to original blood. A proof of the good effect of a close affinity in race-horses may be found in the produce of the dam of George IV.'s favourite mare Maria. By those celebrated stallions, Rubens and Soothsayer, they were worthless; but by Waterloo and Rainbow, grandsons of Sir Peter, and thus combining much of her own blood, they could run to win.

The first and most important point in the choice of a blood-mare for a racing stud, is the soundness of her constitution and limbs; although, of course, it is desirable she should be of good size and shape, with substance. How highly soever she may be bred, and however well she may have run, if she has not a sound frame, she cannot be depended upon to breed racers. If she have never been trained, of course the risk is increased; but, in either case, her form and action must not be overlooked, as it too often is, rendering the breeding of thorough-bred stock a mere matter of chance. Should she have appeared in public, her racing capabilities are to be consulted. For example, if pace (speed) was her best, as the jockeys say, a stallion should be selected, who, by the known stoutness of his running is likely to tie her produce to pace, or, in other words, to give them both speed and endurance in a race. Her frame should be roomy, or her produce will be apt to be small, although, it must be admitted, there are exceptions to this rule. She should be of what is termed fashionable blood, for, if she be not, and her produce should come to the hammer, previous to trial, they would prove utterly worthless in the market.

It cannot admit of a doubt, that it is trespassing on the powers of nature to expect a mare, or any other female animal, to nourish her foetus, in embryo, so perfectly during the time she is giving suck, as if she were dry or without milk. Nevertheless, it is customary to put all blood-mares to the horse the ninth day after foaling, and it is almost too much to expect that the owners will let them lie fallow, although they may in some measure resemble the man who cut up his goose to get at the golden egg. During the period of gestation, however, the thorough-bred mare should be highly kept. All animals well fed, produce their species of a superior description to those which are not well fed; and nothing more forcibly shows the beneficial effect of warmth in rearing superior varieties of the horse, than that the half-starved horse of the desert should be as good as he is even now found to be.

In a racing-stud, the period of putting mares to the horse is much earlier in the year than that of any other sort, by reason of their produce being almost always called upon to go into work before they are two years old. In fact, they can scarcely be dropped too soon in the commencement of a new year, where proper accommodations are provided for them. A peep into the seven volumes of the Stud-Book will satisfy inquirers into these matters, that some mares have produced more than twenty colts and fillies, and, in a few instances, a third of them have proved good runners; but, we should be inclined to think that the average would not exceed six, as the produce of each mare. It sometimes occurs that mares are put into a breeding-stud, when affected by severe lameness in the feet. When this is the case, the operations of neurotomy or unnerving is recommended; as pain, by producing fevers, not only is injurious to the formation of the fetus, but often causes abortion. Bad, putrid smells, or being struck on the nose, also produce abortion in brood mares.

Virgil, in his excellent remarks on breeding horses, tells those of his readers who wished to gain a prize, to look to the dam; and, until of very late years, it was the prevailing opinion of Englishmen, that, in breeding a racer, the mare is more essential than the horse to the production of him, in his highest form, and we know it to have been the notion entertained by the late Earl of Grosvenor, the most extensive, though not perhaps the most successful, breeder of thorough-bred stock England ever saw. The truth of this supposition, however, has not been confirmed by the experience of the last half century, and much more dependence is now placed on the stallion than on the mare. The racing calendar, indeed, clearly proves the fact. Notwithstanding the prodigious number of very highly bred and equally good mares that are every year put to the horse, it is from such as are put to our best stallions that the great winners are generally produced. This can in no other way be accounted for, than by such horses having the faculty of imparting to their progeny the peculiar external and internal formation absolutely essential to the first-rate race-horse; or, if the term "blood" be insisted upon, that certain innate but not supernatural virtue, peculiarly belonging to some horses but not to others, which, when it meets with no opposition from the mare, or, in the language of the stable, when "the cross nicks" by the mare admitting of a junction of good shapes, seldom fails in producing a race-horse, in his very best form. The blood of some mares will only cross successfully with one particular horse, and Phryne has, for instance, not been very successful since Pantaloon died. Emma, Arcot Lass, and Barbelle have each produced a brace of Epsom or St Legier winners to a different horse. Mandane has also a strong claim to rank with the world-famed Prunella, and she foaled Altisidora by Dick Andrews, Lottery by Tramp, and Brutandorf by Blacklock. It is obvious, then, that owners of racing studs should not hesitate at paying the difference between the price of a first-rate stallion and an inferior one; and there is always one of the former to be found, to suit every description of mare. Breeders of all kinds of horses, but of the race-horse above all others, scarcely require to be cautioned against breeding from mares, or putting them to stallions, constitutionally infirm. By "constitutionally infirm," is chiefly implied having a tendency to fail in their legs and feet, during their training, which too many of our present racing-breed are given to. Still there are as many good judges who side with the earl, and affirm that the exterior conformation of the foal is principally derived from the sire, and its interior from the dam; thus throwing the responsibility of its sound or unsound lungs, which are, after all, the great test of a good racer, on the latter.

In consideration of the preference given to the stallion over the mare in the propagation of racing-stock, may be quoted the following passage, from part 3d of Percival's Lectures on the Veterinary Art, London, 1826:—"It might be supposed that the part the male takes in fecundation is comparatively a very unimportant one; it must be remembered, however, that the copulative act is the essential first cause, that therein the action of the organs is natural and sympathetic, and that the result is the generation of a new animal, bearing a likeness to one or both of the parents; from which it would appear, although the physical part of the male is simply to project the sperm into the female, who alone has the power of rendering it efficacious, that the influence of the sperm is much greater in the generative process than we seem to have any notion of, or at least than we have been able to reveal the nature of in physiology."

**Rearing of Young Racing Stock.**

Under all circumstances, there is too much resemblance between the speculations of the turf and a lottery; but, as the prizes it exhibits are valuable, the most effectual means of obtaining them should be adopted. It signifies little what care and circumspection have been exercised in the selection of stallions and mares, with a view of breeding racers; the prospect of success is very limited indeed at the present day, unless the produce be reared according to the improved system acted upon in our first-rate racing establishments. Such was the perversity of opinion combined with long-established prejudices, and in direct opposition to the daily acknowledged fact, of dry and warm countries having been the first to produce the horse in perfection, that it is only within a very few years that young thorough-bred stock has been reared in the manner in which it should be reared. A thorough-bred colt may now be said to be in training from the day on which he is dropped, so great is the care taken to force him into shape and substance. Not only is he drawing from the teats of his dam the milk of a highly fed animal, and consequently, in itself highly nutritious, but, before he is twelve months old, he eats nearly two bushels of oats per week. The time for expansion of frame is youth, and, when we see a two-year-old at the post, with eight stone seven pounds on his back, looking like a horse able to carry a light man after hounds, we most cordially assent to the answer given by the most experienced Newmarket trainer of the present age to the question, What is the best method of rearing a racing colt? "First observe," said he, "that the blood, or cross, is good; secondly, breed him as you would a sheep, from a roomy dam; and thirdly, give him as little green meat as possible, and as much corn as he will eat." The trainer we allude to has now retired, but he had all the young stock of the Duke of Grafton, and many of the first and most successful sportsmen in England, through his hands, and the annual disbursements of his establishment exceeded ten thousand pounds. That dry and hard food, as it is called, is the natural food of the parent stock from which our race-horses are descended, is beyond all doubt; and that the firmness of their acting parts is attributable to that, and to the warmth and dryness of the climate, is also admitted. Is it, then, to be wondered at, that breeders of horses, and not only of race-horses, have at length found out that dry food and warmth have the same effect in the Temperate as they have had, and now have, in the Torrid Zone? that they have discovered that, when colts are bred on rich succulent food, and subject to a humid atmosphere, the bulk of the body increases out of proportion to the strength of the bones; and to these predisposing causes are to be attributed most of the false points which we find in horses, such as fleshly shoulders, deficiency of muscle, weak pasterns, and flat feet? Virgil discovered this nearly two thousand years ago, and, when speaking in praise of Epirus, as suitable to the breeding of horses, emphatically observes:

"Continuo has leges, veteraque foderae certis Imposita natura locis." Georg. I. 60.

So careful, however, now are some of our principal and most successful breeders of race-horses to avoid these evils, that not only is a thorough-bred colt eating grass ad libitum become a rare sight, but he is not suffered to be exposed to rain, even in the midst of summer, no, not even to a temporary shower. The effect of rain upon horses' backs, is found to produce the worst of diseases—glanders, for instance—as is well known to all cavalry officers who have been on service with their regiments; and it cannot be innocuous to the highly-bred foal or colt. That he should be sheltered from the cold of winter, need scarcely be insisted upon here, although we are rather inclined to think that, in the generality of breeding establishments, he is more exposed to weather in the winter than he ought to be. There is no objection to a moderate allowance of carrots, and a little green food; but according to the old Greek proverb, Ἀλλος Βίος, ἄλλα διάτροφα, another life, another diet, we must hear no more of the "natural food" of an animal insisted upon by many, who is so far called upon to outstrip the laws of nature as to begin to work at fourteen months old, and to appear at the starting-post at two years old, displaying the form, character, and strength of one nearly arrived at maturity. Neither is the land on which a racing-stud is situated oftentimes sufficiently considered; but a want of such consideration has been the source of great loss. It is in vain to expect success unless upon that which is dry, and consequently of sound subsoil; and what is termed "upland ground" is most favourable. Walls, independently of security, are preferable to hedges for inclosures to breeding paddocks, as the latter harbour flies, which are very injurious to young stock, and also to their dams, in hot weather; but the present small dimensions of breeding paddocks, not exceeding a quarter of an acre, and many still less, preclude the use of hedges.

Racing colts are physicked when foals, and periodically afterwards; their hoofs, also, are pared with a drawing-knife, that, by shortening the toe, the heel may have liberty to expand. Physic, in this case, may be termed the safety-valve, and such it is in reality, for this system of forcing nature cannot be free from danger. It is found, however, materially to promote growth, as indeed does the work that our racing-colts perform at such a very early age. Muscular action produces muscular strength, and growth will be the result; and we have seen colts sixteen months old measuring 15 hands 2 inches.

Racing colts can scarcely be handled too soon:

"Dum faciles animi juvenum, dum mobilibs ætas," as Virgil says of the bulls; and Horace illustrates the necessity of early rudition of the human species by the excellence of horses which have been well broken in when young. The first breaking in of colts is also alluded to by Ovid, who, like Horace, is in favour of very careful treatment of them, and reminds us of the necessity of it in the following beautiful line:

"Frasaque vix patitur de gregie captus equus."

The system of breaking colts, however, is not only thoroughly well understood in our racing establishments, but is accomplished with much less severity than it formerly was, and consequently with less danger to the animal.

The time of foaling is one of great interest to owners of valuable brood mares, and particularly so when the produce is engaged, perhaps heavily, or when they are of what is termed a running family. The attention of the stud-groom is directed by sundry forewarnings, the most palpable of which is what is called "waxing of the udder," and appearance of milk, which generally precede parturition two or three days, but in some instances more. As the mare brings forth on her legs, there is little fear of the foal being overlaid by the mother; but the less she is disturbed the better, lest she should trample on its legs. Her treatment afterwards is now so well understood, that nothing requires to be said about it; but a bran mash, with from four to six ounces of nitre dissolved in it, given as soon as she has brought forth, keeps off fever. The great preventative of accidents to foals, is the simple contrivance of rollers on the sides of the door-frames, which secure them from being injured as they rush out of the hovel or shed by the side of their dams, especially in cases of alarm. Some persons prefer purchasing to breeding young racing stock, and it is difficult to determine between the advantages and disadvantages of the systems. It is true that, in the first case, the purchaser has a certainty of some return for his money, inasmuch as he gets his colt or filly, which the breeder may never get, after incurring a great expense on the mare. The price of a promising yearling, from a hundred to a thousand guineas, is a large sum to begin with; and we cannot, in this instance, say with Varro, that "a good horse is known from the first." If purchased after he has won in public, at two years old, he is often not to be purchased, if he has good engagements, under one to three thousand guineas, a large sum to realize, when added to concomitant expenses. Nothing but the immense amount of stakes for young racing-stock can justify such a speculation. For example, in 1824, a filly of the Duke of Grafton's won four thousand four hundred and fifty guineas, public money, by only starting twice; and Crucifix cleared L4805 during her two-year-old season in 1839.

One of the principal drawbacks from the prospects of success in a racing establishment, is a complaint called the distemper, a sort of catarrhal fever, the cause of which is generally attributed to atmospheric influence, and also to any other which may produce what is termed a cold. Unlike common catarrhs, however, the distemper will run through a whole stud of horses; and if it do not, as it frequently does, end in an affection of the lungs, it leaves a lassitude behind it, which requires some time to remove. As a hot sun, with cold winds in spring, and the humid air of the autumn, are the chief predisposing causes of this complaint, an even temperature in the stable, and warm clothing when out of it, together with avoiding exposure to extremes of heat and cold, are the best safeguards against its attacks. It may be compared to a frost over the blossoms, which in one night blasts all former hopes of a crop.

A most interesting event to a breeder of thorough-bred stock is the trial of their racing powers, which at once decides the question of their being worth the expense of training to run or not. There is a great deal of judgment necessary in the act of trying even old horses, but still more is required to form a just estimate of young ones, from the difficulty of knowing when they are quite up to the mark, as well as of keeping them there. They are generally tried early in their two-year-old season, or very late in their yearling one. It is also not one jockey in thirty who can "try" well; and, as a general rule, he ought to ride the trial horse, not the one whose powers are to be tested. William Scott was a first-rate "taster," as it is termed, and so was Frank Butler.

But we have not yet spoken of the form of the race-horse, which we will now describe; and as nothing can be considered characteristic of a species, but what is perfect of its sort, we will so far endeavour to make the pen perform the task of the pencil, as to portray his cardinal points, as nearly perfect as such means will admit of. Nature herself, perhaps, rarely exhibits perfect models in the animal world, leaving the completion of her skill to human sagacity; neither is undeviating symmetry absolutely necessary in a race-horse. In every composite, however, beauty consists in the apt connexion of its parts with each other; and just proportions in the limbs and moving levers, coupled with that elegance of form in which there is no unnecessary weight to oppress the muscles, so peculiar to the highly bred race-horse, is all that need be insisted upon in a racer. It is nevertheless hard to say what horse will make a racer; and also what will not, until put to the test; for, how many horses have appeared, which the eye of the sportsman would not wish to study, and yet have proved themselves very capital runners! This excellence, however, in those "cross-made horses," as they are termed, not misshapen ones, arises,

as has been before observed, from their possessing parts conducive to speed and action, not, perhaps, very strikingly displayed, but, by means of greater length and depth, and a peculiar manner of setting on of the acting parts, enabling them to excel others, much handsomer to the eye, but wanting in either proper declivity, length, or, what is still more probable, in circular extent of those parts. Thus, as the wise man, according to the Stoics, alone is beautiful, so is a race-horse to be admired solely for those points which make him a good race-horse. Although symmetry and proportion form a perfect figure, and they become deformities when any of the component parts exceed or fall short of their due proportions, yet it is not always necessary to measure by the standard of perfection. Suffice it, then, to state the generally approved points of the English race-horse.

We commence with the head, not merely because it has always been considered as the most honourable member in the human frame, but as it is one of the leading characteristics of the thorough-bred horse. His broad, angular forehead, gives him that beautiful expression of countenance which no other breed possesses; and the tapering of the face from the forehead to the muzzle, forms a striking contrast with the large face of the cart-horse, and the forehead scarcely wider than the face. The race-horse should have a black, lively, and rather prominent eye, which denotes a sound constitution; and as horses do not breathe through the mouth, but only through the nose, the nostrils should be rather expanded and flexible, that they may accommodate themselves to quickened respiration, as the speed of the animal increases. But they should not be over large. "Naribus non angustis," says Varro, and he is right. Beauty in the head of the race-horse, however, is only a secondary consideration to the manner in which it should form a junction with the neck, as on that, in a great measure, depends the goodness of his wind in a race. His jaws should not only be thin, and not approach too near together at the throat, but they should not extend too high towards the onset, or they will impede his freedom of breathing. The neck of all horses should be muscular; but what is called a loose neck in a race-horse, is not so objectionable as in a hunter, and is considered as indicative of speed. But as the head of a horse may be called the helm which guides his course, changes, and directs his motions, it is not only desirable that, as he cannot move his head but with the muscles of his neck, those muscles should be pliant, but that he should also have what is termed a good mouth. It is asserted that the weight of the head and neck, the effect increasing with their distance from the trunk, adds to the speed of the horse, by throwing his weight forward; but this is no argument for additional weight or length in those parts, which ought to be duly proportioned to the trunk. The neck of the race-horse should be in no extreme, but rather long than otherwise, and not too much arched.

As horses are said to go with their shoulders, these may be considered as highly important points. They vary in form more than any other part of the horse's frame. Those of Flying Childers rose very high and fine towards the withers; whereas, a firkin of butter rested, unsupported, on the withers of Eclipse, when in covering condition. Upright shoulders, however, being (though not in Teddington's case) an impediment to speed, obliquity of the scapula is absolutely necessary, but we do not insist upon their running fine at the withers. We consider the shoulders of Eclipse to have resembled those of the greyhound, wide at the upper part, and nearly on a line with the back. Large, or even what are called coarse shoulders, contribute greatly to strength, and are no impediment to speed, if there is proper declivity of the scapula, or shoulder-bone. The withers, when high, or thin, should enlarge gradually downwards, and there should be four or five inches between the fore-thighs, but less between the feet.

The true position of the limbs is a most material point in the race-horse, as it causes him to stand over more ground than one which is otherwise formed, although possessing a more extended frame. One of these essential points is, the setting on of, and length in, the fore-arm, or part from shoulder to knee in the fore leg; and another is, the declension of the haunch to the hock in the hind leg, which is termed "well let down in the thigh." It is from having those points in excess, that enables the hare to describe a far greater circle, and cover more ground at one stroke, than any other animal nearly double her size. In fact, the arm should be set on at the extreme point of the shoulder, which insures this act of extension, and also adds to the declivity of the shoulder. The knee should be broad and flat, and if appearing somewhat prominent, the better. All the Herod legs had prominent knees (and no legs stood work better than they did), concussion in galloping being diminished in legs so formed. The cannon, or shank, from knee to fetlock, should be of moderate length in the race-horse (longer than in the hunter), and, above all, the leg should appear flat, not round, with sinews and bones distinct; and the former appearing to be very firmly braced. The pastern of the race-horse should be long, lax, and rather small than otherwise; length and laxness serving as springs, and smallness contributing to agility, and consequently to perseverance or bottom. Some comparison will hold good between this point in a horse, and the "small of the leg," as it is called, of a man, in contradistinction to the calf. Under the pressure of fatigue, no man complains of the "small of his leg," giving him uneasiness, but his calves often give him notice that he has done too much. The hoof of the race-horse should be of moderate size in proportion with the leg above, but, of course, those whose hoofs are unduly small cannot get well through dirt.

We have already alluded to the bone of the thorough-bred horse, which much exceeds that of any other variety of this animal, in its compactness and solidity; which qualities, as the span in the gallop must give a shock in proportion to its length, are admirably adapted to the race-horse. We cannot say of him, what Job said of the behemoth, that "his bones are like bars of iron;" yet, as in proportion to the muscular power of the animal is the dense quality of the bone, that of the race-horse need not, nor should not, be large. Experience teaches us, that bones very rarely break; fractures, when they do occur in racing, being almost invariably in the joints; and rather small bone in the leg of a race-horse, supported by broad and well-braced sinews and tendons, placed distinct from the bone, and forming what is called a flat and wiry leg, is most desirable, and found to be indicative not only of speed and endurance, but likewise of soundness in severe work. It is only those who are ignorant of the anatomical structure of animals, that fix the basis of strength in the bony substances alone, not considering the muscular appendages, which constitute the main-spring of strength and action.

As the strongest bodies owe their vigour to the milk they receive in their infancy, our recommendation to keep brood mares well will not be considered as unsuitable; but the connexion between milk and bone is also deserving of a remark. When animal bones are divested of their oil and jelly, the earth which remains is chiefly lime, united with phosphoric acid. It is worthy of notice, that phosphate of lime is found in abundance in milk. This seems to indicate, that Nature thought fit to place, in the first nourishment of animals, a quantity of osseous matter, with a view to the necessary celerity of the formation and growth of the bones in the earliest stage of their lives. This is one of the numerous instances of the beneficence of the Creator, exemplified by the science of chemistry, and shows the advantages to be expected from a good flow of milk in a mare that is well fed; and it is a remarkable fact, that the nearer the female approaches to the period of parturition, the more is the milk charged with this calcareous phosphate. Nor is it until the digestive organs of the foal are sufficiently strengthened to answer the purposes and work of animalization, that this earthly salt disappears.

But to proceed with the form of a race-horse. The race-horse should have length, but the length should be in his shoulders and in the quarters; that is, the part posterior to the hips, and not in his back. To give him that elegance of form for which he is so conspicuous, there should be no acute angle or any straight line. His shoulders should go into his neck at the points, unperceived, and his back should sink a little behind the withers, which gives his rider a good seat, and does not in the least diminish his strength. On the contrary, horses with very straight backs are generally deficient in their fore-quarters, as well as in their action; and we have known some very good racers, Glencoe and Haphazard for instance, considerably hollow-backed. There should be a little rise in the loins, just behind the saddle; but the race-horse cannot be too closely ribbed up, if you wish him to stay a distance, and carry weight. The ribs should stand out from the spine, producing what is called a round barrel, together with depth of carcass, a formation which not only gives strength of body and constitution, but, by admitting the intestines to be comfortably lodged within the ribs, imparts freedom of breathing, activity and beauty to the whole frame of the horse, other parts being proportional. These useful points must not be carried to an extreme, or the horse may be "too heavy for his legs;" and we know that light-bodied horses save their legs much in their gallops, which accounts for mares and geldings standing the severity of training to a later period of life than stallions, by reason of the former requiring less work, from not generally carrying so much flesh as the latter.

There is no part, excepting the head, so truly characteristic of high breeding in the horse, as his haunch. If a little of the elegance of the parts, however, is diminished by the width of the hips, it will be recompensed by increased strength in the animal, as is the case with broad-shouldered men; and when accompanied with good loins, these protuberances of the ilium can scarcely be too great for the purposes of power and action. We next come to the thigh, the form and substance of which is most material to the race-horse; for although horses are said to go with their shoulders, the power to give the impetus in progressive motion comes from behind. With all animals endowed with, and requiring extreme rapidity of motion, the thigh is furnished with extraordinary powers and length—the hare, for example, whose thighs are let down to a great extent for their size, and the lower part of the hinder leg placed under them, as that of the racer should be, from a proper curve of the hock. The speed of the ostrich arises from the power of the muscles from the pelvis to the foot; and the thigh of the fighting cock is a point much considered by breeders. It is not necessary that a race-horse's thigh should be very large, but it should exhibit well developed muscle. Descending lower in the limb, we arrive at the hock, a very complicated joint, but the form of which is most important in the race-horse. It should be large and lean, and the point of it projecting behind the body, which greatly increases the power of the lever in action, as will presently be most satisfactorily shown.

Size.

The point of perfection in most things lies at a middle distance between two extremes, and such is the case here. The medium height, about 15 hands 2 inches, to 15 hands 3 inches—4 inches to a hand—is the best for a race-horse. As the long beam breaks by its own weight, so large animals have rarely strength in proportion to their size. On the English turf, however, the very large horses that have appeared have, with a very few exceptions, not been found so good under high weights, as those of a medium height; and several instances are on record (Meteora, Whalebone, and others, for example), of the best horse of his year being very nearly the lowest. Ancaster Sturling, Gimerack, Highlander, Milksop, and several of the best 14 hand 2 inch horses of the last century, could also defeat 16 hand horses cleverly at 4 miles, under 12 stone; and those modern dwarfs Mickey Free and Midas have carried 8 st. 7 lbs. with good success.

The following are amongst the principal and essential points of a race-horse, pointed out by Mr Darvill in his Treatise on the English Race-horse, London, 1834:

"His head should be small and lean; his ears small and picked; his eyes brilliantly large; his forehead broad and flat. . . . . . . His throat should be clean, and fine from the butt of the ear down to its centre, with a good wide space between the jaw-bones, which latter should be thin. . . . . . . The neck should be moderate in length. I prefer its being wide; I mean its width should be formed by the substance of muscles which pass along each side of the top part of it; from the withers to the head it may gradually rise a little in its centre, but by no means to any extreme, as I have a great aversion to a high-crested race-horse. Indeed, I would prefer that his neck should be rather of the ewe or deer-like shape, than that it should be loaded on the top. As to the lower part of the neck, I have no very particular remarks to make, further than the trachea or windpipe should be spacious and loosely attached to the neck on its way to the lungs.

"The withers may be moderately high, and, if the reader like, they may also be moderately thin; but, with respect to this latter point, I am not so very particular, provided the shoulders lay well back. From the withers the back commences. I confess that appearance may be in favour of a horse that has his back a little low or hollow. As a saddle-horse this may be all very well, but for a race-horse to have strength and liberty of stride his back should be straight and moderately long, with the shoulders and loins running well in at each end. The loins should have great breadth and muscular substance, so much so as for them to have the appearance of being raised as it were on their surface; and those muscles posterior to the loins should fill up level the top part of the quarters to the setting on of the tail, which latter should be set on pretty high up."

After describing the fundament, which, if small, close, and tight, and rather projecting than otherwise, Mr Darvill considers as a good constitutional point, he thus proceeds:

"I now come to speak of the body, or what is by some people commonly called the 'middle piece' of the horse, and which is divided, internally, into two cavities by a muscular substance called the 'diaphragm.' The anterior cavity, the chest, contains the lungs, the heart, &c. The posterior one, the abdomen, contains the stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, &c. Now, with respect to the external form of the body, which contains and protects all those numerous organs so important to life, I shall first make my observations on the chest. To use a common phrase, and somewhat an expressive one, a horse in this part should be what is called 'well over the heart,' that is, he should be deep in his girth, round or well arched in his ribs. I mean by this, that a rider on the back of a race-horse (as they are generally better about the chest than horses in common use), should feel he has some breadth or substance between his legs; and there should be a good swell of muscle before his knees, or the centre of the flaps of the saddle. The chest, thus spaciously formed, gives room for respiration, so that in training the horse's wind can be brought to the greatest perfection, which enables him to run on in long lengths. The next part to be treated of is the abdomen or belly, or what is usually called the carcass. It may perhaps appear a little strange, but I have a great aversion to what is commonly called a good-curricassed horse, nor am I particularly partial to a large sheathed one. I like both these parts to be in the medium, as I do also that of his being well ribbed up. It is true that a horse being well ribbed up denotes strength, and a short close-made race-horse is, in running, handy at his turns, and, as I have already noticed, he is generally a pretty good one under high weights. over a small round cock-pit course; but this description of course and sort of running is not now so much practised as formerly, or rather it is a sort of racing that does not exactly suit long-striding horses, as most of those that are run in Newmarket. Another thing is, that horses with large carcasses are mostly great gluttons; they put up flesh very rapidly, and are very difficult and troublesome to train, in consequence of their constitutions being too strong, or proportionally too much for their feet and legs. Such horses not only seldom remain long in training, but they cannot remain long in condition without their becoming stale in themselves, as also on their legs, and those are my reasons for objecting to very large-caroused horses; yet I do not wish horses to be what is termed 'tucked up' or waspish in their carcasses. I like a horse's carcass to be in the medium; that is, it should be straight and handsome from behind the girths of his saddle; and what will make up sufficiently well, and give him sufficient strength of constitution, is the well formation of the parts already noticed, as the chest, the loins, and the fundament.

"To return to the fore extremities. The shoulders commence from a little below the withers; they should lie most particularly well back, should be deep, broad, and muscularly strong; yet those muscular parts should appear to the eye as being moderately so, that is, not unproportionally loaded. These muscles should be distinctly seen, there should be no appearance of fat, or, as it is technically termed, 'adipose membrane.' The shoulders cannot well be too oblique in their descent to the front of the chest; here, on each side, a joint is formed by the lower part of the scapula or shoulder-blade being united with the upper part of the humerus or arm-bone. Those joints, thus formed, are usually called the points of the shoulders, which points should appear straight or level. There should be no coarse, projecting, or heavy appearance about the points of the shoulders of such horses as are intended to race; nor indeed does this often occur, unless where it happens that the chest or counter of the horse is unproportionally wide. In taking a front view of the chest, it should appear moderate as to breadth; and if its promineney is at all to the extreme, it should be in consequence of the fulness or substance of those muscles covering the breast, which muscles should be lengthy, and their divisions distinctly to be observed. The fore-arm should be broad and long, and most particularly well furnished with muscles on its top parts, inside as well as out; I mean by this, that the muscles on the top and inside of the arm should here be so large as to leave but a moderate space between the fore-legs, immediately under the chest, and which muscles should appear, as those in front of the chest, distinctly divided. The posterior part of the top of the arm is called the 'elbow,' this should appear (the horse in condition) somewhat on a level with the body; if it at all deviates from this appearance, I would prefer its standing in, to that of its standing unproportionally out. The knee-joint should be large, broad, and flat in front; generally speaking, the larger and broader all joints are in reason the better and stronger they are; and the longer, coarser, and rougher, their projecting points or processes are, the greater and more secure will be the lever for the muscles or tendons to act upon, provided such projecting parts or joints (as the hocks and pasterns) do not amount to disease, as that of producing spavins and ring bones. The legs from the knee to the fetlock cannot well be too short, neither can they well be too broad or too flat, nor their flexor tendon scarcely be too large or appearing too distinctly divided, as it were, from the leg. The fetlock-joint should also be large, and the pastern proportionally strong, but its length and obliquity should be in the medium. The wall or crust of the feet should also be moderately oblique, with the heels open, and frogs sound; this, indeed, is generally the state of racing-cols on first bearing their paddocks, if their feet have been paid proper attention to during the time they may have remained there. Yet the feet of such of them as have been some time in work will occasionally get out of order; they grow upright and strong; the horn gets hard and brittle, and the heels more or less contracted; almost all of which defects are too often occasioned from the want of proper attention being paid to them at the time of shoeing, and of proper applications being applied to them in the stables. Previous to concluding my remarks on the fore extremities, it may not be amiss to observe to the reader, that, supposing him to stand opposite to those parts of the horse, if the animal is formed in them, as I have already described, the centre of the top part of the fore-arm, to be well placed, ought to be nearly or quite in a parallel line with the top or fore-part of the horse's withers; and again, from the top part of the form-arm down to the foot, for the horse to stand firm and well, and have the power of using his fore-legs well, he should stand perfectly straight on them; I mean by this, they are not to appear too much under him, or too much out or away from him. Suppose again, for example, a man standing in front of the horse, and here taking a view of the foot, the centre part of the wall or crust should be in or on a parallel line with that lower part or joint of the shoulder, commonly termed its point. A horse's feet, thus placed, will neither be too much out nor too much in; but should his feet deviate from what I have here observed, by amounting to a fault, in turning too much out or too much in, I should prefer their being a little out, to that of the other extreme of turning in, and being what is called 'pigeon-toed.'

"I shall now proceed to describe the hind-quarters or posterior extremities. As may be supposed, the well formation of those parts is of the utmost importance to a race-horse in his running; it is, therefore, necessary that they should be, in breadth, substance, and length, of very superior dimensions. The hips should have a great breadth between them; and if they are a little coarse or projecting so much the better, provided such coarse projections are not in the extreme, or appear vulgar or unsightly. From the centre and posterior part of the loins to the top of the tail is called the 'croup,' and should be of great length; and, if it deviates from that of a straight line, it may be somewhat arched in the centre; the croup being thus formed gives great breadth to the top of the quarters, the length of which, from the croup down to the hock, cannot scarcely be of too great an extent, in order that there may be sufficient room here for the attachment of those broad, powerful, lengthy, and distinctly divided muscles on the outside of the quarters and thighs; and there should also be a similar portion of such muscles on the inside of the quarters and thighs; so that a man, who is a good judge, taking a posterior view, may observe how the horse is made. In this position he should be, as it were, struck by the appearance of the great breadth and length of the back part of the quarters, and as he moves his head to the right or left, the centre and outside of the quarters and thighs, and the swell of the muscles, should appear beyond a level with the hips. The upper part of the muscles on the inside of the quarters should appear quite close to each other, so that no vacant space should be visible between them, as that of an appearance of the horse being (if I may thus express myself) chucked up in the fork. Such should be the lengthy and muscular quarters of a well-made race-horse.

"The stifle-joint should be in a direct line under the hip, and the length from this joint to that of the hock cannot reasonably be too long, and the farther out of the angular or oblique position of the thigh-bone the better, so as to admit of the back part or projecting point of the hock appearing some distance out beyond the top of the hind-quarters; those parts being thus formed, admit of a very considerable..." lever for the main tendon here to act upon the tendon Achilles, which, like the flexor one of the leg, can scarcely be too large or too distinctly seen in its commencement, from the lower part of the quarter to its insertion into the posterior or projecting point of the hock, the os calcis. The hock should be broad and wide, with a clean lean appearance, and those soft parts which are occasionally the seat of through-pins and bog spavins, in a sound well formed hock, should appear more as cavities than as having the above-mentioned projections, and which are sometimes the cause of lameness. The hind-leg, like the fore one, should be short, broad, flat, and straight; the trifling angle formed by the hock should, together with the moderate obliquity of the pastern, bring the extremity of the toe nearly under the stifle-joint.

Action of the Race Horse.

As amongst the Egyptians the lion was the hieroglyphic of strength, so was the horse of agility; and truly nothing displays it more elegantly than he does, when in a state of liberty. In the race-horse, action, as in eloquence, is the next thing to substance; and virtus in actione should be the horse-breeders' motto. But the action of the race-horse is of a nature peculiar to his calling. He must not only possess great stride in his gallop, the result of great proportion in his limbs and moving levers, but also a quickness in repeating that stride, or he would lose in time what he gains in space. It is then when stride and quickness are united, that the fleet racer is produced; and in his race with Diamond, Hambletonian is asserted to have covered twenty-one feet at a stroke at the finish of it; and Eclipse is generally believed to have covered eighty-three and a half feet of ground in a second, when going at the top of his speed, which, by a calculation by Monsieur Saintbel, amounted to about twenty-five feet of ground covered at a stroke. Different ground requires different action; and the long striding horse may be beaten on a hilly, or turning course, by one of a smaller size, but with a shorter stride, which prevents the Newmarket courses being a certain criterion of a good runner at Epsom, which is very trying ground. The state of the ground, likewise, whether wet or dry, soft or hard, tells so much in a race, as often to give it to a horse very little thought of at starting, as was the case with Tarare and Saucebox, winners of the St Leger, at Doncaster, in 1826 and 1855. The celebrated Euphrates, the winner of so many gold cups, and who ran till he was in his teens, was nearly a stone below his usual form, after even a hard shower of rain. This variation of fleetness corroborates our assertion, that the virtue of what is termed blood is mechanical, or that the excellence of all horses is mechanical, and that the smallest deviation from a true formation of the acting parts operates so powerfully as to render them, under certain exertions, nearly valueless.

Wind.

It is true, "speed wins the race;" but to make it available to the race-horse, it must be accompanied by endurance, or "bottom." A great promoter of this is clear wind, or freedom of respiration, the want of which makes the war-horse rebel in the manège, the hunter run into his fences, the draught-horse fall, as if he were shot, and the racer either stop, or bolt out of the course. In fact, when the organs of respiration are fatigued, all animals are nearly powerless. The cause of good wind may be distinguished by the eye, and arises chiefly from depth in the fore-quarters, which implies a capacious thorax or chest. However wide a horse may be in his foreparts, he will not be good-winded unless he is, at the same time, deep. But still wind in the race-horse depends on something more—on the nature of his constituent and component parts, which, if in proper proportion, impart to him strength and agility, giving him that easy action which will not readily fatigue these organs of respiration; and so enable him to run on, when others, less gifted by nature than himself, are forced to slacken pace. The good effect of clear wind in a race-horse is in fact twofold; first, it gives him signal advantage in a race; and, secondly, horses thus organized require less work to make them fit to start.

The following passage on this point is worthy of remark:—

"When the animal powerfully exerts himself, a more ample supply of pure blood is required to sustain the energies of life, and the action of the muscles forces the blood more rapidly through the veins; hence the quick and deep breathing of a horse at speed; hence the necessity of a capacious chest, in order to yield an adequate supply, and the connection of this capacity of the chest with the speed and the endurance of the horse; hence the wonderful relief which the mere loosening of the girths affords to a horse blown and distressed, enabling the chest to expand, and to contract to a greater extent, in order to yield more purified blood; and hence the relief afforded by even a short period of rest, during which this expenditure is not required, and the almost exhausted energies of these organs have time to recover. Hence, likewise, appears the necessity of an ample chest for the accumulation of much flesh and fat; for, if a considerable portion of the blood be employed in the growth of the animal, and it be thus rapidly changed, there must be provision for its rapid purification; and that can only be effected by the increased bulk of the lungs, and the corresponding largeness of the chest to contain them" (Farmers' Series, "The Horse," part vi., p. 182).

Certain thorough-bred horses would deceive an inexperienced observer as to the real state of their organs of respiration, by an appearance of difficulty of breathing, which in reality they do not possess. The term for this apparent defect is, in one instance, hard breathing, or high-blowing; and, in another, "cracking the nostrils." Of the first description was the celebrated Eclipse, whose breathing in his gallop could be heard at a considerable distance; and of the latter (still more common) may be reckoned many of the best racers of past and present days. Indeed, a race-horse cracking his nostrils in his exercise, and snorting well afterwards, are considered indicative of good-windedness. On the other hand, when a race-horse becomes a roarer, which is a common effect of a severe attack of the epizootic, called the distemper, he is rarely able to struggle in a race, although there have been several instances of winners under such very unfavourable circumstances.

Temper is a property of much importance to the race-horse, subject as he is to its influence under more trying circumstances than most other descriptions of horses. In the first place, his fine and nearly hairless skin, softened and cleansed as it is by frequent copious perspiration, is so highly sensible to the friction of the wisp and brush, as to induce him to try to rid himself of his tormentor by attacking the person who is dressing him, and thus becomes vicious in the stable. It will also be recollected that he is at this time perhaps in the very highest state of condition and good keep of which his nature is susceptible. On the race-course, again, he has often to encounter the (to him) unnatural sound of music, and many strange objects; perhaps two or three false starts before he gets into a race; and too often, when doing his best in a race, very severe punishment both by whip and spur. It is in his race, however, and chiefly in the last struggle for it, that the temper of the race-horse is most put to the test; and, if really bad, he either runs out of the course, to the great danger of his rider, and to the inevitable loss of his owner and those who have betted on his winning, or he "shuts up," as the term is, and will not head his horses. It is evident, then, that breeders should not send mares to stallions of known bad temper, as nearly all those propensities are found to be hereditary.

It would be absurd to draw a comparison between the English race-horse in training and the horse of the desert "educated," as Mr Gibbon eloquently says of him, "in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains him in the habits of gentleness and attachment." Nevertheless, we are inclined to believe that the tempers of many naturally quiet horses are made uncertain, and oftentimes decidedly vicious, by want of proper judgment, as well as good temper, in those also who have the management of them. Brutes, like men, demand a peculiar mode of treatment when we require them to do their utmost for us; and it is certain that this principle holds good in regard to both—namely, that in general kindness gains its point, cruelty provokes resistance, and a proper degree of severity produces obedience. The panther in the fable knew who fed her with bread, and who pelleted her with stones; and we may be assured, that so noble and high-spirited an animal as the horse feels with acuteness sensations of pleasure and pain.

We often hear it asserted that the British thorough-bred horse has degenerated within the last few years, and is no longer the stout and long-enduring animal that he was in the bygone century, particularly during the last twenty years of it. We are inclined to believe that there is some truth in this. We do not think we have such good four-mile horses, as they are termed, as formerly, which we consider easily accounted for. They are not wanted, very few four-mile races being now run, even at Newmarket or in the country, and therefore a different kind of race-horse is sought for. It may, however, be true that the inducement to train colts and fillies, at a very early period of their lives, for these short races, has had an injurious effect on their stamina, and, consequently, on the stock bred from them. Formerly a horse was wanted for a lifetime, now he is cut up in his youth to answer the purposes of perhaps but one day—a system, we admit, quite at variance with the original object of horse-racing, which was intended to benefit the community, by being the means of producing, as well as displaying, the constitutional strength of the horse in its very highest perfection. Another cause may have operated in rendering thorough-bred horses less powerful than they were, or less capable of enduring severe fatigue. During the period of high weights and long courses, horses and mares were kept on in training until after they had arrived at the age of maturity, neither did they begin to work so soon; whereas now, no sooner have they won, o: run well for some of our great three-year-old stakes, than they are put into the stud to produce racing stock, which is perhaps to be used much in the same manner as they themselves have been used, or, we should have rather said, abused.

The amount of work which horses now get through at two years' old is enormous. Lord Alfred, for instance, ran twenty-four races at this age, and won nine; and Clothworker won twenty-nine out of fifty-nine; and Rataplan thirty-eight out of sixty-three races during two consecutive seasons. Zohrab, and Isaac and Naworth, also retained their racing powers for seven or eight seasons; and Alonzo, who began to race as a two-year-old in 1849, is still in good winning form in 1856.

But to return to the alleged alteration for the worse in the British race-horse. We admit the fact, that he is not generally so good at high weights over the Beacon at Newmarket, or any other four-mile course, as his predecessors were, whose descent was closer than his is to the blood of Herod and Eclipse, and the descendants of that cross, said to be the stoutest of any. Nevertheless he is, in his present form, more generally adapted to the purposes to which the horse is applied. He has a shorter but more active stroke in his gallop than his predecessors had, which is more available to him in the short races of the present time than the deep rate of the four-milers of old times; and as he is now required to start quickly, and to be on his legs, as the term is, in a few hundred yards, he is altogether a more lively active animal than formerly; and, as such, a useful animal for more ends than one. In former days not one trained thorough-bred horse in fifty made a hunter. Indeed few sportsmen had the courage to try the experiment of making him one. He went more upon his shoulders, as well as with a straighter knee, than the modern race-horse does, and required much greater exertion in the rider to pull him together in his gallop. All those sportsmen, however, who remember such horses as the late Earl Grosvenor's John Bull and Alexander must admit that in form and substance they were equal to carrying the heaviest weight across a country, and the last-mentioned horse was the sire of several very powerful, at the same time very brilliant hunters. But as it is action, after all, that carries weight, the thorough-bred horses of this day are not deficient in that respect, unless undersized; and there are more thorough-bred hunters at this period, and have been more for the last thirty years, than were ever known before. This improvement in action also qualifies the full-bred horse for the road; whereas formerly not one in a hundred was fit to ride off turf.

"The Druid," in his new work, The Post and the Padlock, after mentioning that the late Lord George Bentinck had thirty-eight horses in training one season, and that his losses on his colt Farintosh, in stakes and forfeits alone, reached L3000, thus epitomizes the leading points of the turf as it is—"Mr Mostyn's winnings in stakes are said to have been about L22,500 in 1847, an amount which has, we believe, never been exceeded. In value the L6325 Derby of 1849 still keeps the lead; while the L3378 which was taken at the Doncaster Grand Stand in Stockwell's year is said to be the largest sum of the kind on record. The subscribers to the above Derby numbered 237, and the luckiest of handicaps was the Chester cup of 1853, when 131 out of 216 horses accepted. This cup also brought out forty-three starters in 1852, which is more than have ever been seen at the starting-post in the memory of man before or since the handicap era—that inevitable result of railway facilities for "getting a length" set in with such intensity. None of these "great facts" bear date in 1855; but taking Weatherby's Calendar as our guide, we may characterize the turf of that year as a vast institute for sport, comprising 144 meetings in Great Britain and Ireland, which were attended by 1606 horses, of whom only 680 were winners, fed by L60,000 of added money, inclusive of the value of cups and whips, and diffusing L198,000 in added money and stakes, "more or less."

Speed of the Race-Horse.

All animals in a state of domestication exhibit powers far beyond those that are natural to them in their wild state, and writers on the horse have advanced to the utmost verge of possibility, in recording the maximum speed of the English race-horse. Most of the instances stated by them, such as Flying Childers having run a mile in a minute, are unsupported by authority, and therefore not worthy of regard. That the horse, however, has ever been considered the swiftest beast of the forest, may be gathered from the frequent allusions to its fleetness by inspired as well as by heathen writers. Thus, the chariot-horses of Oenomaus, King of Elis, were said to be begotten by the winds, emblematical of their prodigious swiftness; and Homer represents the steeds of Achilles to be the produce of Zephyrus (the west wind, said to be the swiftest of any), and Podarge, whose name signifies speed. Nor is Virgil far behind the rest in his encomium on the fleetness of his colt, which he makes to challenge the very whirlwind itself. As it is speed, however, that wins the race, it is most essential to the race-horse, provided it be accompanied by stoutness; and unless we wish to fly through the air like Pacolet on his wooden horse, we may be contented with the speed of the present English race-horse. One minute and forty-five seconds is considered first-rate time for a mile; and the one mile six furlongs, and one hundred and thirty-two yards, St Leger course, is done, on the average, by three-year-olds, carrying 8 st. 7 lbs., in 3 minutes 20 seconds. West Australian's Ascot cup race, in 1854, when he ran the very severe 2½ miles course with 8 st. 5 lbs. in 4 minutes 27 seconds, is the best modern time we have.

Expenses of a Breeding Racing-Stud.

Some persons must be breeders of race-horses, but whether to profit or loss, depends on various circumstances. Amongst them may be reckoned the following:—Judgment in selecting the parent stock or blood; conveniences for keeping the produce well and warm, and on land suitable to breeding; and plenty of money at command to enable a breeder to purchase mares of the very best racing families, and to put them to the best of stallions. When this is the case, we think breeding (we mean quite distinct from risk in racing) would seldom fail to pay, if the foals were sold off at weaning time, or even at a year old. The price fetched by the two hundred blood yearlings, which are usually brought to the hammer in England, averaged, during the racing seasons of 1854-55, about 127 guineas, which is calculated for all prices, from 10 guineas to 1000 guineas, or in the case of Lord of the Hills, 1800 guineas. Within the fifteen months which preceded this remarkable (1855) sale at Doncaster, to Mr S. Crawford, 1000 guineas, 1020 guineas, 1000 guineas, 1200 guineas, and 1400 guineas, were got for yearling colts in public and private; and 900 guineas and 810 guineas for yearling fillies. The average price at the royal sale of 1854 was 441 guineas for fourteen, many of whom were of the Orlando blood, which fetches a higher price than any other we have. No doubt, in all studs, great loss is sustained by a certain proportion of the young stock which promise to be small and not worth training; but here breeders are often deceived. For example, the late Lord Grosvenor sent Meteor, the best mare in England of her day, to Chester Fair, when two years old, to be sold for £16, because she was considered as too small; and he also suffered Violante, the best four-mile racer of her day, to be sold, untried, for £50, but fortunately purchased her again. The great prices, however, occasionally paid to breeders for some horses (4000 guineas, for example, to the Earl of Jersey for Mameluks, and 3500 guineas for Bay Middleton), make up for the loss inseparable from such as, by misshape, diminutive size, and casualties, are culled out, and sold for what they will fetch, which seldom amounts to much. Five thousand guineas was refused for Plenipo; and the greatest price ever given for a race-horse was 6500 guineas for the two-year-old, Hobby Noble, in 1851. We may, however, cease to wonder at such prices, when we find that the Flying Dutchman won his owner nearly £20,000 in stakes alone, and that the winnings of himself and his half-brother, Van Tromp, who belonged to the same owner, amounted to nearly £34,000. Cotherstone won, at three years old, £12,765, West Australian, £10,975, and Surplice, £10,375.

Colour of the Thorough-bred Horse.

The prevailing colour of the thorough-bred horse is peculiarly elegant and chaste, being a bright bay, with black mane and tail, and black legs to correspond, although occasionally relieved with a small white star on the forehead, or a white heel. It is remarkable that what may be termed vulgar colours, such as light sorrel, or dun, or brown with mealy muzzle, are very seldom met with in the thoroughbred horse; and we know but one instance of the pie-bald, and very few roans. Black is not common, nor approved of, although several of our best racers, almost all of the Trumpator blood, have been of that colour. The real chestnut prevails a good deal, and is quite equal to the bay in the richness and brightness of its hues. Such was the colour of Eclipse; and, as is the case with game-fowls, in the breeding of which there are instances of a reversion to the original colour, after fifteen descents, it is not uncommon for thorough-bred stock to be chestnuts, although got by a bay stallion out of a bay mare, or from a sire and dam of any other colour, provided the blood runs back to his, Eclipse's, source. Indeed, a small dark spot which that celebrated horse had on his quarter, has been frequently found in his descendants in the fifth or sixth generation. It is an old and trite saying, that "a good horse cannot be of a bad colour;" nevertheless, colours of horses are, to a certain extent, indices of their physical powers. Such has proved to be the case with men; and it was found in the ill-fated Russian campaign, that men of dark complexions and black hair bore the severity of the climate better than men of an opposite appearance to them. It is, however, rather a remarkable fact, that by far the greater number of eminent English prize-fighters have been men of light, not dark, complexion. The ancients reckoned thirteen colours of horses, giving the preferences to bay (haddies); and the dark bay, or "Jersey bay," is still the favourite English colour, though foreigners prefer a "black brown."

A second-rate description of racer was once very prevalent in England, known by the term "cock-tail," or half-bred horse, as he is called; but improperly so termed, because the strain in him is generally very slight indeed, and too often difficult to be traced. Many objections are raised by sportsmen, who are thorough racing men, and who wish well to the turf, against the cock-tail racer, and for very good reasons. In the first place, if really half-bred, he resembles the royal stamp upon base metal, for no half-bred horse is deserving the name of racer; and, secondly, what are called half-bred stakes, some of which are very good, have been the cause of a great many frauds being committed, by bringing horses to run for them under false pedigrees, which will ever be the case, from the great difficulty of proving a horse to be thorough-bred, whose dam may have been purchased by accident, or in some clandestine way, and still perhaps of pure racing blood. An animal is produced against which no half-bred horse, in the proper acceptation of the term, has a chance, and he sweeps the country of all the good stakes; and some such horses (Habberley and Combat, for example) have proved themselves superior to many of the thorough-bred racers of their year. But the breeding of horses for these stakes is anything but beneficial to the country, the great object of racing. It encourages a spurious race of animals, often possessing the faults of the blood horse without the strength and activity of the hunter, and it was for the latter description of horse that this stake was first intended. Bona fide hunters' stakes would be advantageous, if open to all horses bringing certificates of their having been regularly hunted throughout a season, but not merely ridden by a boy to see a fox found; and giving no allowance to the horse called "half-bred." Let the best hunter win, which would encourage the breeding of strong thorough-bred horses, which make the best hunters of any;—a fact no one who has ridden many of them will deny.

---

1 See "The Cocker," by W. Sketchley, Gent. London, 1814. To assist in the detection of spurious blood, and the correction of inaccurate pedigrees, is the chief purpose of this excellent publication, now increased to a seventh volume, and forms a part of every sportsman's library; but, unfortunately, many breeders who do not race are careless about entering their foals in it. "The Druid," in his recently quoted work, gives it as his opinion, that about 1550 blood mares annually bring 1150 foals to the birth in Great Britain. Taking 1851 as the basis of his calculations, he considers that about 1160 foals were born in that year, of which not 1100 were alive on the next new-year's day. Of these 574 ran in 1853, which number decreased in 1854 to 516, but in 1855 the remnant of that high-bred band only numbered 280.

THE HUNTER.

There is no description of horse which could be applied to so many purposes, racing excepted, as the powerful English hunter. Setting aside his own peculiar services in the field, he is fit to carry a man on the road, in the field of battle, and he answers for every kind of draught. Indeed, we are inclined to believe no horse would equal him in ploughing; and as for road-work on harness, either slow or fast, nothing could touch him, in a carriage properly suited to his powers. It is, however, no less true than singular, that out of a hundred sportsmen assembled at the meeting of a pack of fox-hounds, not half a dozen would be found mounted on horses which they themselves had bred. This arises from two causes: First, the greater part of them have not patience to await the arrival of a young horse at his best, and consequently sell the few they do breed, without giving them a fair trial; and, secondly, such has, of late years, been the prejudice against riding mares in the hunting field, that they have been chiefly left in the hands of farmers and yeomen, who are become the principal breeders of English hunters. Neither do hunters find their road direct from the breeder to the studs of noblemen or gentlemen. They generally go through the hands of an inferior country dealer, from whom they are bought by the principal London and country dealers, and sold by them to the sportsmen of the various hunts. There are, of course, exceptions to this proceeding. A great proportion of English yeomen and farmers are very excellent horsemen, and, as such, having the capability of making their young horses into hunters, and, distinguishing them by riding them afterwards with hounds, obtain now and then as high a price for them as they fetch after having passed through the hands we have described. It is, however, to be lamented that the last-mentioned description of persons, the breeders and trainers of young hunters, do not, for the most part realize such large prices as the first, although fully entitled to it, as a reward for their trouble and skill.

It is impossible to lay down any precise rules for breeding hunters, so many collateral circumstances being necessary to be taken into consideration. For example, Pennant, in his Zoology, says, "Our race-horses are descended from Arabian stallions, and the genealogy faintly extends to the hunter." From this we learn the interesting fact, that a wonderful change, within the last sixty or seventy years, has taken place in the form and character of this sort of horse, inasmuch as, in the opinion of some of the first of our English sportsmen, and such as put the powers of the horse to the most severe test, the hunter of the present day is not in his perfect form unless quite thorough-bred. This part of the subject we shall discuss hereafter; but as there are several of our hunting counties not at all suited to this description of horse, the thorough-bred hunter, and a large portion of our sportsmen who, some by reason of their weight, and others from prejudice against them, neither can nor will ride them, we may safely assert, that not more than a twentieth part of English hunters are at this time of quite pure blood. We will, however, set forth what we consider the best properties of the full-bred and the half-bred hunter, as he is called, as also the most probable means of breeding each kind to advantage; at the same time venturing an opinion, that, when their individual capabilities are put into the scale of excellence, the balance will incline to the former. One great obstacle to the general success in breeding hunters is, not so much the difficulty of access to good stallions, but of making breeders believe that it would be their interest to send their mares to such as are good, although at an extra expense. Most rural districts, in other respects favourable to horse-breeding, swarm with covering stallions, the greater part of which have proved very bad racers; but which, falling into the hands of persons who are popular characters in their neighbourhood, and covering at a low price, get most of the farmers' brood mares sent to them, their owners never reflecting, as they gaze upon these misshapen animals, that nature will not go out of her course to oblige them, but that, in the animal creation, "like begets like." Neither does the evil stop here. So much is this made a matter of chance instead of one of judgment, should the produce of a mare sent to one of these bad stallions be a filly foal, and she proves so defective in shape and action, as to be unsaleable at a remunerating price, she remains the property of her breeder, and in time becomes herself a brood-mare. What, then, can be expected from such produce? Why, unless chance steps in and supplies the defect of judgment, in the first instance, admitting that she is sent to a better stallion than her sire was, by the procreative powers of the male so far exceeding those of the female, as to produce a foal free from the defects of the dam, another shapeless, unprofitable animal is produced. Nevertheless, in the course of time, perhaps this produce, if a female, however bad she may prove, is also bred from, and thus a succession of shapeless horses is produced, to the certain loss of the breeder, and much to the injury of the community. Under the most favourable circumstances, and with the aid of good judgment, we cannot consider horse-breeding to be a certain source of gain; yet there are many inducements to try it as one branch of rural economics. The money goes out a little at a time, or by degrees, and therefore it is suitable to such occupiers of land as cannot embark in more extensive speculations, and it returns in a lump, oftentimes at a most welcome moment, and, in many instances, of sufficient amount to render the average of former less profitable years sufficient to cover expenses, if not to leave a profit. There is likewise another inducement to breeding horses; we mean the interest inseparable from all human speculations, from which more than an ordinary return may be looked for, which is the case here; added to the nearly universal interest attached to the breeding and rearing of every species of domestic animals.

With respect to brood-mares designed for breeding hunters, we admit that circumstances, not always within control, have their weight. An occupier of land is possessed of a mare or two which he thinks may breed hunters, and having them, it may not be convenient to him to replace them by those which might be more likely to breed good ones. But the choice of a stallion is always within his control, and he should not spare trouble, and moderately increased price, in his selection. It is well known to all hunting men, that the stock of certain horses have been remarkable for making good hunters (President, Belzoni, and Sir Harry Dimsdale, for instance), and that there are such horses always to be found, on seeking for them. A few pounds extra, laid out by the breeder in putting his mares to such horses, were sure to be amply repaid; for the produce would be generally sought after and purchased, even previously to their being tried. Englishmen know of no such restrictions, nor do we wish they ever should; but the interference of the governments of several European states as to stallions for the use of their respective countries, reads us a useful lesson on this head; for it is well known, on the other hand, that a great number of stallions to which English hunting mares have been put, have been equally remarkable for begetting soft infirm stock, quite unequal to endure, for any length of time, the severe work of a hunter.

It should also be borne in mind, that even a first-rate racer may not be a propagator of first-rate hunters. The former is called upon to exert his powers on very different grounds and under very different weight to the latter, and the action which may suit one may not suit the other. This accounts for the stock of certain thorough-bred horses, which were very indifferent racers, proving very excellent hunters. We have already given it as our opinion, that a cross of Arabian blood is a great desideratum in that of an English hunter, and we need not urge this point farther; but if breeders would reflect, that the expenses of rearing a bad colt equal those of rearing a good one, they would attend more than they do to the following nearly unerring directions:

First, Observe similarity of shape in horse and mare. As length of frame is indispensable in a hunter, if the mare be short, seek for a stallion likely to give her length. Again, if the mare be high on her legs, put her to a short-legged stallion, and vice versa; for it is possible that even a hunter's legs may be too short, a racer's certainly may be. In fact, to form a complete hunter, it is necessary he should be more perfect in his shape than a racer, which will admit of imperfections that would quite disqualify the other.

Secondly, Look to constitution. As no description of horse endures the long-continued exertion that a hunter does, this is a point to be attended to. But it may be overdone. Horses of a very hard nature, very closely ribbed up, consequently great feeders, with large carcasses, seldom make the sort of brilliant hunter now the fashion in England. Besides, one of this description requires so much work to keep him in place and in wind, that his legs must suffer, and often give way when his constitution is just in its prime. Horses with moderately sized carcasses last longest; and, provided they are good feeders, will come out quite as often as they ought to do, and are invariably good winded and brilliant, if well-bred and of good form, with a few other requisites.

Thirdly, and lastly, Let the breeder of any kind of horse be careful in avoiding either sire or dam that has proved constitutionally infirm. As has been already shown on very high authority, perfect or defective conformation is not more likely to be the result of a proper selection of horse and mare, than disease to be inherited from parents that have been constitutionally diseased. We could name stallions whose stock have been blind; others afflicted with splints, curbs, and spavins, and a mare which produced three roarers by three different sires. But it may be said, that splints, curbs, and spavins, are the result of malformation of the parts. Granted; but avoid all such malformation which is quite apparent to the eye in a breeding stud. It may perhaps be carrying this objection too far, were we to say, we would not breed from a mare or horse, which had become groggy or lame in the feet, from diseased navicular joints. Had the feet been more vigorously constituted, perhaps such lameness might not have occurred; yet it is but too probable that here the predisposing cause may be traced to over-severe treatment, and not to constitutional defect. The choice of sires is by no means limited, as there are about 300 blood sires in the United Kingdom, at the service of the public, at all prices for blood mares, from 50 guineas to 2 guineas, or even gratis, if the mare is the dam of a winner. Birdcatcher (whose winners number 148), Touchstone, Melbourne, and Bay Middleton, are at the head of the senior division, and Touchstone has no less than 26 of his stock, headed by Orlando, at the stud. Beeswing was very successful as a brood mare; but the same cannot be said of many very high class mares who have worked hard for some seasons on the Turf. Barbelle, the dam of the Flying Dutchman and Van Tromp, left the turf early, and the dam of Alice Hawthorne and Rebecca never had a bridle on. Next in importance to the judicious selection of sire and dam, is the rearing of the colt which it is intended should make a hunter. It was the remark of a gentleman who kept fox-hounds more than half a century, that "great part of the goodness of a horse goes in at his mouth;" and nothing is more true. Nimrod, in his Letters on the Condition of Hunters (p. 223, first edition), says, "It is my confirmed opinion, that unless a colt be what is called 'deformed,' it is in the power of good keep, exercise, and physic, to make him what is termed 'a fine horse,' and one which will sell for a large price, either for harness or the saddle. No one who has not witnessed it, is aware of the improvement in shoulders, thighs, gaskins, &c., from good old oats, accompanied by regular work and proper riding." Breeders of hunters may be assured that such is the case; and that it is of little use to breed colts with the expectation of their making first-rate horses, unless they keep them very well in their colthood. They should also be treated as horses at a very early age. They should be ridden gently, and by a light man, or boy, with good hands, at three years old, across rough ground, and over small fences; and at four they should be shown bounds; but they should only follow them at a distance, and after the fences are broken down; for, if put to take large leaps at that tender age, they are apt to get alarmed, and never make first-rate fencers afterwards. Above all things, avoid getting them into boggy ditches, or riding them at brooks; but they should be practised at leaping small ditches, if with water in them the better, in the middle of a field, the rider putting them at them in rather a brisk gallop. This gives them confidence, and, the natural result, courage. With respect to the use of the bar, and teaching colts to leap standing over it, the practice is now condemned, and the system of letting them become timber jumpers, by taking it, as it comes, in crossing a country, is preferred, the present rate of bounds not admitting of the time occupied in a standing leap.

Some sportsmen adopt, and we believe with good effect, what is termed the "circular bar." Every description of fence that a hunter is likely to meet with, is placed within a prescribed circle of ground, and in this is the colt lodged, the man who holds him standing upon a stage in the centre. As another man follows him with a whip, he is forced to take his fences at a certain pace; and, in a very short time, a good tempered colt will take them with apparent pleasure.

At five years old it is customary to consider a horse as a hunter; but we are inclined to demur here. It is true, that if a colt has been very well kept, on the hard meat system, he is enabled to go through a good day's work with hounds at five years old, being quite equal to a six-year old, which has been kept on soft food, and not sufficiently forced by corn; yet it is always attended with danger of injury to his joints and sinews, if not to his general constitution; and we cannot pronounce a horse to be a hunter until he has passed his fifth year. As muscular action, however, produces muscular growth, he should not be kept in idleness during his fifth year, but should be ridden to cover, or with harriers, before Christmas; and when the ground gets dry and light in the spring, a good burst with fox-hounds may not do him harm. We do not, however, consider any five-year old horse fitting or safe to carry a gentleman over a country, as he cannot be sufficiently experienced to take a straight line.

We have known some masters of fox-hounds who have preferred purchasing yearling colts, or weanlings, at Michaelmas, to breeding them for their own use.

There are undoubtedly certain advantages attending purchasing yearly colts, with the view of making hunters of them. Such only may be selected as appear calculated for the country they are intended to cross, and the weights they will be called upon to carry; whereas, were the master of bounds to depend on the produce of his own mares, he might be disappointed in being able to select the number he would require to replace, in due time, the vacancies which occurred annually in his stud. We should consider the sum of 35 or 40 guineas for a good colt, at weaning time, a fair remuneration to the breeder, and well laid out by the purchaser.

Previously to giving directions for the purchase of a full-grown hunter, we shall proceed to exhibit him in his highest form, although we are aware of the difficulty, on certain subjects, of conveying, clearly, an idea from our own mind to that of another. We shall, however, endeavour to make ourselves understood by describing each individual point. As to the form and shape of a hunter's head, as we do not ride upon it, it is not of much consequence, provided it be well hung on; and that is of the very highest importance, not only, as we have shown in the race-horse, on account of his respiration or wind, but unless it be so, he cannot be pleasant to ride. Not only must his jaws be wide, but when we consider that the head of a horse hangs in a slanting position from the extremity of the neck, and that the neck itself projects a considerable distance from the chest, on the muscular strength and proper formation of the neck must also depend whether a horse be light or heavy in hand, and consequently pleasant or unpleasant to ride. A weak or loose neck may not be so material, as we have before observed, to the race-horse; he is generally ridden in a martingale, and in that case always; add to which, his race is soon run. Nevertheless, we like to see the neck of the race-horse rise out of the shoulder with a tapering curve, in which case he is pleasant to ride in his gallop, and, if a hard puller, his jockey has much more power over him than if his neck were loose and low. But, in a hunter, the proper position of his head is a point of the greatest moment, as without it his rider cannot handle him properly at his fences; and if he be not a regular star-gazer, he is always dangerous to ride over a country. The proper junction of the head with the neck, and the carrying of it well or ill, depend chiefly on two particular muscles contained in the neck. The most important of these is called the splenius muscle, which constitutes the principal bulk of the neck above, and its action is sufficiently evident, namely, very powerfully to elevate the head and neck. The principal beauty of the neck, indeed, as well as the carriage of the head, depends on this muscle; and its ample development is a point the sportsman should attend to in the choice of horses that are to carry him with hounds. A certain degree of muscularity of the neck is absolutely necessary in a hunter, and it is greatly promoted by good keep in colthood; also by delaying the period of castration till the second year, which should invariably be done, when the want of this muscularity is apparent in the first. It must, however, be observed, that there is a medium in this muscularity of the neck, although excess is the better extreme of the two; for when the neck of a horse appears, like that of a sheep, to rise out of the chest, and so far from being arched above, and straight below, is hollowed above, and projects below, such a horse is nearly worthless for any pleasurable purpose, as his head cannot, by any means whatever, be got into a proper place.

It has been said that a horse with a long neck will bear heavy on the hand. We do not believe that either the length of the neck, or even the bulk of the head, has any influence in causing this. They are both counterbalanced by the power of the ligament of the neck. The setting on of the head is most of all connected with heavy bearing on the hand; and a short-necked horse will bear heavily, because, from the thickness of the lower part of the neck consequent on its shortness, the head cannot be rightly placed. The head and neck, however, should be proportioned to each other. A short head on a long neck, or a long head on a short neck, would equally offend the eye. Although length of neck in a hunter is not desirable, length of shoulder is indispensable. Horses have raced well with short upright shoulders; but it is impossible that one so formed, however good he may be in his nature, or even in his general action, can be a safe hunter, and for this reason: A hunter is constantly subject—by down-hill leaps, leaping into soft ground, and getting his fore-legs into grips or unsound ground—to have the centre of gravity thrown forward beyond the base of his legs; and it is more or less recoverable according to the length or shortness of his shoulder. By length of shoulder is meant obliquity of the scapula or shoulder-bone, by which the point of the shoulder is projected forward, and which, added to the obliquity of the scapula, enables the rider to sit considerably behind, instead of nearly over the fore-legs or pillars of support, which, on a short and upright-shouldered horse, he must do. One remark, however, must be made respecting the oblique shoulder. It is sometimes not sufficiently supplied with muscle, with which the upright shoulder generally abounds. We therefore recommend purchasers of young horses for hunters to give the preference to what may appear coarse shoulders, nay, even inclined to be somewhat round or flat on the withers, provided they are accompanied by the necessary and absolutely essential obliquity of the shoulder-bones.

The setting on of the arm—which should be strong, muscular, and long—is of much importance to a hunter. By the length of this part in the hare, as we have already observed, added to the obliquity of her shoulder, she can extend her fore-parts farther than any animal of her size; in fact she strikes nearly as far as the greyhound that pursues her, by the help of this lever. The proper position of the arm, however, is the result of an oblique shoulder. When issuing out of an upright shoulder, the elbow joint, the centre of motion here, will be inclined inward; the horse will be what is termed "in at his elbows," which causes his legs to fall powerless behind his body, and he is seldom able to go well in deep ground. There are exceptions, but they are rare. A full and swelling fore-arm is one of the most valuable points in a horse, for whatsoever purposes he may be required; and although we have occasionally seen hunters with light thighs carry weight well, we never have seen it so carried by horses deficient in their arms.

If sportsmen were to see the knee of the horse dissected, they would pay more attention to the form and substance of it than they generally do. It is a very complicated joint, but so beautifully constructed that it is seldom subject to internal injury. Its width and breadth, however, when considerable, are great recommendations to hunters, as admitting space for the attachment of muscles, and for the accumulation of ligamentous expansions and bands greatly conducive to strength. Below the knee is a point on which we will not say much here, as we have already alluded to it in our remarks on the race-horse; we mean the shank or cannon bone, and its appendages. It can scarcely be too short in a horse that has to carry a heavy man; round legs are almost sure to fail; those of the hunter should be flat, with the back sinews strong and well braced. This constitutes what sportsmen call a "wiry leg."

The fetlock is also a complicated joint, and very liable to injury. In a hunter it should be large and strong. But, as regards his action, the pastern is still more material, and also to his standing sound. Very few horses with short pasterns can go well in deep ground, and for this obvious reason: The action of the joint is destroyed by getting below the surface of the ground, and is of course sooner immersed than when it is longer. But a greater evil than this attends a short pastern; it is the predisposing cause of navicular lameness, particularly in horses carrying weight, owing to the foot being deprived of that elasticity which a longer pastern affords, and which consequently relieves the concussion on the foot coming to the ground in galloping and leaping, as well as on the hard road. Horses with short, and consequently upright pasterns, cannot be pleasant to ride, and they seldom stand many seasons' work. Excess in either should be avoided, but of the two a hunter is less objectionable from the extreme of length than of shortness in this most material part.

That the foot of the hunter should be wide, and not low or weak at the heel, is also obvious to the meanest capacity, independent of its being the form most conducive to health. The nature of the ground he has to travel over requires at times the widest base he can present to it as a foundation for his great bulk, and thus the farmer carries out his manure upon tender land in a broad cart. Xenophon relates that certain people of Asia were accustomed, when snow lay deep, to draw socks over the feet of their horses, to prevent them sinking in it up to their bellies; and we know why an ox sinks less in soft ground than a horse does. It is because his foot enters it expanded, by means of the division of the claws, and when he draws it out it is contracted. The foot of the hunter, however, should not be too wide, or it may operate against his speed.

The position of the fore-legs of the hunter admits of more latitude than that of his hinder ones, or indeed of any other part of his frame. We have seen brilliant hunters standing in all positions and postures as regards their fore-legs. Some very much over the knees, that is, with the knees bent and projecting outward; many upon very twisted fetlocks, turning the toes out; and a few, though only a few, turning the toes in. In the human frame, a certain squareness in the position of the feet is consistent with strength, as we see in the statues of Hercules, but the lightness of a Mercury is indicated by the direction of the toe outwards. This is to a certain extent the case with the horse. Although, if measured by the standard of perfection, his toe is required to be in a direct line with the point of his shoulder, yet we have seen and heard of some of the speediest and best racers and hunters, the position of whose fore-feet have deviated considerably from this supposed essential line; but the inclination of the toe outwards is so common in horses used for these purposes, that it can scarcely be called a fault. Indeed, some persons argue that a leg so placed affords a broader base to the superincumbent weight than when quite in a line with the shoulder, that is, provided the twist arises from the fetlock, and not from the setting on of the arm. Be this as it may, we are well assured that, provided the hinder legs and quarters are good, a hunter will admit of a considerable deviation from the true line in the fore-legs, and carry his rider brilliantly. It is well known that a much more twisted fore-legged horse could not well be seen than the celebrated Clipper, for many years said to be the most brilliant hunter in Shropshire; and one of the best hunter-sires in Shropshire had this deformity.

But there is one portion of the fore-quarters of the hunter to which a rule must be applied that will not admit of an exception: he must be deep in his chest or brisket, that is, from the top of the withers to the elbow. Numerous are the narrow, but deep horses, in their "girth," as the term is, that have carried heavy weights in the first style with bounds; but no matter how wide a horse may be, if he have not depth he cannot carry weight, and is very seldom a good-winged horse, even under a light man. One of the greatest compliments, then, that can be paid to a hunter at first sight is, that he appears 2 inches lower than he really is. Such, however, is the case with horses whose growth has been forced in their bodies by good keep when young, and thus they come under the denomination of "short-legged horses," so much esteemed by hard riders. They are likewise, for the most part, better leapers than such as have less growth in the body and stand upon longer legs.

We have before observed, when speaking of the race-