SQ THE HORSE 



certain number of generations. The subject is a difficult one, for while it 

 is comparatively easy to keep a recoi'd year by year of the foals as they 

 are dropped, it is extremely difficult to obtain satisfactory proof of similar 

 facts which occurred six generations back, and this would be the earliest 

 period at which it could be supposed that the stain of impure blood could 

 be washed out. For instance, supposing a thoroughbred horse is put to a 

 common mare in 1859, and the produce is a filly in 1860 ; this filly might 

 again breed a filly in 1864, and have a granddaughter in 1868, and a 

 great-granddaughter in 1872, and so on to the year 1870, when the 

 produce would still be composed of one sixty-fourth part common blood 

 and the rest thoroughbred. But twenty years would elapse without any 

 public record of the facts, and we all know how difficult it is to disprove 

 any statement made under such circumstances. The safest plan, I believe, 

 is to adopt the course now pursued, unless it can be shown that it is 

 expedient to cross the blood of our thoroughbred stock with some other 

 strain for the sake of improving it. An Eastern horse is at once admitted 

 as being supposed to be of pure blood, and there is therefore no difficulty 

 in his case, nor would there be any in the other to which I have alluded 

 if a public declaration were made beforehand, but for this there is now no 

 provision. There is no doubt that when half-bred races were in fashion 

 numerous exchanges of foals took place, by which thoroughbreds were 

 made to appear as half-bred and vice-versd. But though the pseudo half- 

 bred may be able to compete with the winner of the Derby or St. Leger, 

 and though his appeai-ance may be almost proof positive of the purity of 

 his blood, yet he is excluded from the Stud-book for ever. In this way 

 some of our half-bred stallions are known to be of pure blood, and 

 their stock is of great value in the hunting-field, but no one would breed 

 from a mare of this kind, because he would know that Mr. Weatherby's 

 pages are shut against him, and he could not claim that her produce 

 should receive the seal of purity afforded by that gentleman's pen. 



INCREASE OF SIZE AND SYMMETRY 



The size and shape of the race-horse of our own days are superior to 

 those of the early part of the last century, as far as we can judge of the 

 latter by a comparison with the portraits painted by Stubbs and his 

 cotemporaries. In point of height there can be no question, for we have 

 numerous records of the number of hands which may be ascribed to the 

 celebrities of the age of Charles II. and his immediate successors. 



Out of one hundred and thirty winners in the middle of the last centuxy, 

 only eighteen were 15 hands and upwards, whereas now, a winner below 

 that height is a very great rarity indeed, even among the mares. This 

 increase of size is doubtless mainly due to the influence of the Godolphin 

 Barb, who was himself larger than most of the Eastern sires, and got 

 stock of a still greater height. His son, Babraham, was 15 hands high, 

 then considered an extraordinary development ; and of the eighteen 

 winners mentioned above as being 15 hands and upwards, eleven were by 

 the Godolphin Barb or his sons. The average at present may be fixed at 

 15 hands 3 inches, as I have already shown at page 15. As far as shape i? 



