796 



HORSE 



HORSERACING 



animals being 18, while 12,880 home-bred horses 

 were exported at an average of t>5. In 1891-95 

 from 14,000 to 23,000 were annually imported, and 

 from 12,000 to 17,000 exported. 



There are works on the horse by Sidney (new ed. 1887), 

 "Walsh [' Stonehenge '] (new ed. 1880), Youatt (new ed. 

 1882), Cuyer and Alix (Paris, 1886), Hayes (1893), 

 Sidney (new ed. 1893), Tegetmeier (1894), and 

 Tweedie ( 1894 ) ; on horse-management, by Mayhew 

 (1864) and others; on the anatomy of the horse, by 

 M'Fadyean (1884) and Flower (1892) ; on horse-breaking, 

 by Moreton (1883) and Hayes (1889). See also the 

 articles RIDING, HIPPOPHAGY, VETERINARY MEDICINE, 

 GLANDERS, BROKEN WIND, UNSOUNDNESS, &c. ; and 

 Huth's Bibliographical Record of Hippology (1887). 



Horse, MASTER OF THE, the third great officer 

 of the court, who has the superintendence of the 

 royal stables, and of all horses and breeds of horses 

 belonging to the Queen. He exercises authority 

 over all the equerries and pages, grooms, coachmen, 

 saddlers, and farriers, and has the appointment 

 and control of all artificers working for the royal 

 stables. He has the privilege of making use of the 

 royal horses, pages, and servants, and rides next to 

 the monarch on all state occasions. The office is 

 one of great antiquity, and is considered a position 

 of great honour. He is appointed during pleasure, 

 by letters-patent ; but his tenure of office depends 

 on the existence of the political party in power. 

 The salary is 2500 a year. 



Horse-chestnut. See CHESTNUT. 



Horse-fly. See FOREST-FLY. 



Horseguards. See GUARDS. The name is 

 also applied to a large public office in Whitehall, 

 appropriated to the departments under the general 

 commanding-in-chief. The word Horseguards is 

 used conventionally to signify the military author- 

 ities at the head of army affairs, in contradistinction 

 to the civil chief, the Secretary of State for War. 



Horse-hair. See HAIR. 



Horse-hair Worm. See HAIR-EEL. 



Horseless Carriages, a name popularly 

 given to the various motor vehicles propelled by 

 electricity, gasoline, compressed air, and other 

 forces not due to animal energy. 



Horsemanship. See RIDING. 



Horsens, a Danish seaport, at the head of 

 the Horsensfiord, 32 miles SSW. of Aarhuus by 

 rail. Pop. (1880) 12,654; (1890) 17,290. 



Horse-power. The word power is of frequent 

 use as a scientific expression. Thus we speak of 

 steam-power, water-power, and so on. When used 

 in this sense it is quite obvious that reference 

 is merely made to the nature of the store of energy 

 in the particular motor under consideration. Again, 

 when we speak of the total energy of a given 

 system as the total power that it has of doing 

 work, it would seem to be almost an insult to 

 the mental power of our auditor to tell him in 

 addition that by the latter phrase we mean simply 

 total work measured in terms of any convenient 

 unit. But it is often necessary to know the 

 quantity of work which can be produced in a 

 given time by a given motor. It is in this con- 

 nection that the term one horse-power is used to 

 denote the rate at which on the average a horse can 

 do work per unit time, and this rate is adopted 

 in Britain as the unit rate of working. Estimates 

 of its numerical value necessarily differ very much ; 

 and so, in order to get a definite unit available for 

 scientific purposes, the convention is made that the 

 original estimate of Boulton and Watt shall be 

 regarded as correct. The value which they gave 

 was 33,000 foot-pounds per minute. 



An ordinary rule for calculating the horse-power 

 of a steam-engine is to divide by 33,000 the con- 

 tinued product of the area of the piston in inches, 



the pressure in pounds weight per square inch, the 

 length of the stroke in feet, and the number of 

 strokes per minute. Thus, by the horse-power 

 of an engine we merely mean the numerical rate 

 at which it can do work, expressed in terms of the 

 above conventional unit, and this number obviously 

 coincides with the number of horses to which the 

 engine is equivalent as regiirds work in the same 

 time. Of course the available horse-power is less 

 than the actual horse-power as got by the above 

 rule, because of the work which has to be done 

 against friction in the engine itself. See STEAM- 

 ENGINE. The term man-power is similarly used, 

 being usually taken as one-eighth of a horse. 



Horseracing. Horses were used for har- 

 ness purposes before they were ever ridden ; and 

 chariot-races took place before horses raced under 

 saddle. The earliest mention of chariot-races occurs 

 in Homer ( Iliad, xxiii. ), who gives a clear description 

 of those contests. The programme of the Grecian 

 games included horseracing in the 33d Olympiad 

 i.e. the year 648 B.C. ; some authorities give the 

 time as the 23d Olympiad, though this earlier date 

 was that of chariot-racing. Racing can thus claim 

 a history, albeit a broken one, of nearly 3000 years, 

 and, at the period above mentioned, it was so 

 far reduced to a system that the horses had to be 

 entered and sent to Elis at least thirty days before 

 the contests began, the riders spending the month 

 in a course of training and exercise. The 71st 

 Olympiad, or 496 B.C., the Greeks instituted a race 

 called the 'Calpe,' which was confined to mares, 

 just as the One Thousand Guineas and the Oaks 

 are now ; while according to Grote's History of 

 Greece it would appear that, in course of time, a 

 certain number of races were restricted to colts of 

 one age, so that they might not labour under the 

 disadvantage of competing under equal weights 

 against older horses. In the 10th century, Hugo 

 Capet accompanied his request for the hand of 

 King Athelstan's sister by a present of several 

 German running horses. In the reign of Henry II. 

 ' hackneys and charging steeds ' raced at Smith- 

 field ; and under Richard I. we hear of a course three 

 miles long, with a prize of 'forty pounds of redy 

 golde ' for the winner. To James I. the credit is 

 commonly assigned of having placed the turf on a 

 permanent basis. His taste for racing appears to 

 nave been fostered by an accidental circumstance. 

 It is said that several Spanish horses, thrown over- 

 board from the ships of the Armada, reached the 

 coast of Galloway, and proved superior in speed to 

 any of the native horses. The suitableness of 

 Newmarket as a site for racing had been perceived 

 prior to the advent of James I. , who, however, lost 

 no time in witnessing the races there, as he was 

 present in 1605, probably for the first time, that 

 being two years after his accession to the throne. 

 It is worth mentioning that the king was at Lincoln 

 races in 1607, because, on the occasion of a race 

 taking place there on the 3d April, the king appears 

 to have acted as a sort of clerk of the course, for he 

 caused the track, a quarter of a mile long, to be 

 ' raled and corded with rope and hoopes ' on both 

 sides, whereby the people Avere kept out, and ' the 

 horses that ronned were seen faire ' (Nichols' Pro- 

 gress of James I. ). Cromwell was, to a certain 

 extent, an upholder of racing, though perhaps 

 he did more for breeding than for racing ; but 

 Charles II. greatly encouraged the turf, and 

 caused races to be held near whatever place he 

 might happen to be staying. Queen Anne, as is 

 well known, kept racehorses, ran them in her 

 own name, and gave plates to be run for. None 

 of the first three Georges signalised themselves by 

 extreme love for the turf ; but it was in the 

 twenty-third year of George III. that the Horse 

 Tax, which inter alia imposed a duty of two guineas 



