1 8 HORSEMANSHIP. 



his animal to Albert Gate and Mr. Lombard's pays a visit 

 to Knightsbridge, also to emerge therefrom under new 

 ownership. There need be no blind buying here, for the 

 constant visitor to the Row of a forenoon must have seen 

 the identical hacks ridden day after day, and must have had 

 ample opportunity of pretty correctly reckoning them up. 

 When on the day of sale — bidding, of course, through some 

 one who knows the ways of the professional hahitucs — if some 

 fashionable West End or Paris dealer appears " fond," the 

 bidder may safely go on. Perhaps from the two and a half 

 months' constant bucketing up and down that monotonous 

 ride the horse may be a little stale, but, if he be young, and 

 passes the vet, a few shoeless weeks in a cool roomy covered- 

 in yard, with a bite of green food, will soon freshen him up 

 and restore his action. At the end of the racing season at 

 Newmarket a lot of very useful cobs are annually sold. If 

 a man is a really good judge, or can enlist in his service 

 one who is, there is no better place to pick up a good 

 horse than at the numerous fairs throughout the United 

 Kingdom, and the further he goes afield the better his 

 chance of suiting himself at a moderate price. 



We now come to the Cob, which, if a safe, handy, symme- 

 trical, and gentlemanly animal, light in hand, and active, 

 and of good colour, is one that, as the dealers say, "keeps 

 the money together." There must be nothing of the polo, 

 or of any other pony, about him, neither must he be a 

 dwarfed thoroughbred, but a cob pure and simple ; such a 

 one as was " Sir George," and is " Little Wonder of Rig- 

 maden Park," Mr. IMorton's "Sir Gibbie," Mr. W. Burdett 

 Coutts's "Tommy," or Mr. C. E. Cooke's '^ Cassius." A 

 coarse carty-looking cob gives one the idea of an under- 

 sized agricultural horse. Now that the ItaHan and other 

 governments so extensively patronize pedigree hackney 



