DETERIORATION OF THE HORSE IN ENGLAND 39 



which the Boers were able to get out of their 

 horses. 



' Hotspur,' in December, 1 903, writing of a meeting 

 at Sandown Park, says, in the Daily Telegraph, 

 that ' the field was constituted of a typical collection 

 of chasers.' What could that field be typical of but 

 the general deterioration ? And in the same month 

 he says that Lawyer III. was an awkward customer 

 to ride, for he overpowered his jockey in the pre- 

 liminary, and in the actual race he pulled so hard 

 that he began to brush through his fences ! Perhaps 

 that is not the only lawyer that is an awkward 

 customer! And on December 28, 1903, in support- 

 ing Lord Stanley's animadversions on early two-year- 

 old racing, he uses expressions which clearly prove 

 serious general deterioration. He speaks of the 

 paucity of stayers now in training. He says that 

 Cup horses of the approved type of Isonomy or 

 Isinglass are seldom met with ; that the purely 

 old-fashioned sort of thoroughbred, such as Fisher- 

 man, exists, apparently, only in the records of 

 antiquity. He cites Mr. Chapman as to the few 

 old horses there are in training of sufficient class to 

 compete for the big prizes at Ascot ; speaks of the 

 tendency to breed so many weeds, and of the over- 

 whelming progeny of worthless sires with which 

 England is overrun. He affirms that short races 

 are doing incalculable harm to the breeding of 

 sound racehorses, and that the strenuous desire to 

 make the game pay overrides any laudable hope 



