DETERIORATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN HORSE 19 



Australasian (October 26, 1901) that never before 

 were there so many complaints of want of constitu- 

 tion, bone, endurance, and ability to carry weight, 

 made against the thoroughbred as at the present 

 time. And in another article he said that our 

 general run of horses is not nearly so good as it 

 was many years ago. On April 11, 1903, he wrote 

 that the best lovers of the turf in England had 

 bewailed the strong tendency to deterioration that 

 had been manifested in the English racehorse during 

 the last quarter of a century, and that that was the 

 result of breeding for speed. He quoted a modern 

 writer on the annual sale of thoroughbred yearlings 

 at Doncaster a few years ago, who said that it was 

 anything but flattering to see so many with bad 

 forelegs — ' quite stilts, in fact.' Then he applied the 

 lesson to Australia, and showed that it was not a 

 few horses, no matter how brilliant their perform- 

 ances, that made up a breed, but that it was the 

 standard of excellence of the majority that consti- 

 tuted the value of the race, and said that it was a 

 great misfortune that the breeders of thoroughbred 

 horses had come to regard their raison d'etre as 

 purely for racing purposes. Then he asked how 

 long would one of those spindle-shanked weeds that 

 he saw daily going to the Flemington training- 

 ground last in a forty minutes' run with the 

 Pytchley, and affirmed that if they got into a 

 ploughed field they would not be likely to get out 

 of it. Flemington is the Garden of Eden of horse- 



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