1 86 RIDING 



There are, as I have said, occasions when a wealthy man 

 may be looking out for a good pair of matched carriage horses, 

 a weight-carrying cob, or a good hunter up to fifteen stone and 

 upwards ; when such an opportunity offers the man who has 

 the necessary article will be able to make a good haul. Then 

 200 guineas may be got for a well-matched pair ; the highest 

 price I have heard for a single horse is 120 guineas, or about 

 the lowest that a London dealer asks for an animal he thinks 

 a purchaser is likely to buy. 



Horse-breeding, of all forms of stock raising, is the one into 

 which the commercial element enters least. Every man, when 

 he goes into the business, of course thinks and believes that 

 he will make it pay, but in a very large proportion of cases 

 the remuneration derived from horse-breeding must be looked 

 for not in pounds, shillings, and pence alone, but in the inter- 

 est and affection which young horseflesh begets in the mind of 

 their owner and breeder. Hence it comes that in the colony 

 where the leisured class is very small, and where every man is 

 engaged in an endeavour to make money, it is only those in 

 whom the Englishman's passion for the horse is exceptionally 

 strong who will submit to the risk attendant on the business. 



When these colonies were first settled and the native grasses 

 were rich and abundant, they contained plenty of excellent 

 sustenance for foals, the young horses rapidly increased in bone, 

 substance, and stature on the nourishing provender of the virgin 

 lands ; but within a short time the superior commercial at- 

 tractions of wool, shortly enhanced by remunerative prices for 

 the frozen sheep, induced most horse-breeders to run sheep 

 with their horses. The natural consequence followed : the 

 close-biting Merinoes and Lincolns devoured all the most 

 succulent and nourishing of the grasses, and the foals that came 

 over the ground after them were compelled to be content with 

 the leavings. As a result, instead of growing rapidly the foals 

 made little progress and were stunted and weedy. 



Those breeders who will afford to keep paddocks entirely 

 for horses, or can get access to the back-lying, unsettled lime- 



