245 



most celebrated blood. Good size is always in request, but running is the 

 paramount object. A sound practical judgment may be profitably exer- 

 cised, in the purchase of a Horse that has already appeared in public. 

 In the purchase of yearlings and two-year-old stock, it must be observed, 

 that tbeir points are not so visible, nor their general conformation so 

 obvious to the judgment, as when nature has fully established herself in 

 them. There are still certain and invariable points, in which one cannot 

 be mistaken : as to those parts in which action is most concerned, their 

 considerable extent is chiefly to be looked to in colts, position will im- 

 prove with age. Good hits are sometimes made by the purchase of mares 

 in foal. Crop's dam in foal, was purchased at less than twenty pounds, 

 I remember, and Crop afterwards won the colt stakes at Epsom. 



Colts will always be trained early, from the natural desire of bring- 

 ing them as soon as possible, into use, or rather of making the disco- 

 very, whether they are ever likely to be useful, and to repay the very 

 heavy expence of their keep. There is certainly a valid exception to 

 this general rule. A promising, but over-grown colt or filly, from size 

 and weight, and insufficiency of the lower joints, may be totally unable 

 to stand early training. It is too often the practice, to keep on such, 

 although they are never sound, or well to run, and the general conse- 

 quence is, that such seldom or never prove winners, and are at last 

 turned out in training, incurably lame. Colts of this description, hav- 

 ing about them the promise of a capital form, should be dismissed in the 

 first instance, and suffered to remain at large, in the paddock, without 

 feeling the weight of a feather, until the spring in which they rise five 

 years old, when the bulk and substance of their inferior joints will have 

 become more in proportion to their weight, and their whole tendinous 

 sj^stem consolidated and firm. In this case, the old notion of not train- 

 ing a galloway until five years old, may be sometimes advantageously 

 realized ; he would then be in possession of his full powers, and if they 

 were considerable from nature, would exhibit them to a great, and other- 

 wise unattainable advantage. 



The present Earl Grosvenor, I understand, is the greatest breeder of 

 Horses in Br. tain, as was his late noble father. The Earl of Egremont, 

 the Duke of Grafton, Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, the Earl of Dar- 

 lington, 



