610 MODERN FARRIER. 



Barbary horses must, according to what was said 

 above, get over thirty-seven feet in a second ; the 

 swiftness of the English horses will be found, by this 

 mode of estimating, far superior. Starling must 

 have moved, in the performance mentioned before, 

 eighty-two feet and a half in a second. 



Dr. Moty, in his celebrated publication, 'Le Jour- 

 nal Brittanique,' considering this subject, tells us, 

 that every bound by the fleetest Barbary horse at 

 Rome would cover eighteen royal feet and a half, 

 and twenty-two or twenty-three feet by the English 

 horses ; so that the swiftness of the latter would be, 

 to that of the former, as four to three, or nearly, 

 (We are not to forget that the English race-horse 

 carries a jockey, and frequently weights on his back, 

 the Barb nothing.) The horses that passed over a 

 mile in a minute, would evidently go faster than 

 the wind, for the greatest swiftness of a ship at sea 

 has never been known to exceed six marine leagues 

 in an hour ; and if we suppose that the vessel thus 

 borne partakes one third of the swiftness of the wind 

 that drives it, the latter would still be no more than 

 eighty feet a second, which would be two feet and a 

 half less than the quantity of ground covered by 

 Childers and Starling in that time. For this calcu- 

 lation we are indebted to M. de la Condamine's Jour- 

 nal of a Tour through Italy. BufFon in his Natural 

 History, mentions an example of the extraordinary 

 speed of the English horse. Mr. Thornhill, the 

 post-master of Stilton, laid a wager, that he would 

 ride in fifteen hours three times the road from Stilton 

 to I^ondon, the distance being 215 miles. On the 

 29th of April, 1745, he set out from Stilton, and 

 after mounting eight different horses, arrived in 

 London in three hours and fifty one minutes. In- 

 stantly leaving London again, and mounting only 

 six horses, he reached Stilton in three hours and fifty- 

 two minutes. For the third course he used seven 

 oJ' the same horses, and finished it in three hours 



