TREATMENT OF YEARLINGS. 129 



such an one is to a practical man simple enough. The system 

 of breaking and mouthing has been previously described, and 

 the yearling, quietly ridden in the wake of a sober schoolmaster 

 and thoroughly accustomed to the sight of the different objects 

 with which he will be brought into frequent contact, will, if he 

 has been placed in good time in the trainer's hands, become as 

 nt and handy by Christmas as an old horse. He may then be 

 tried for speed ; but it is necessary, before this crucial test is 

 applied, that the beginner should be thoroughly schooled and 

 apt in the art of 'jumping off,' and how often these lessons 

 have to be repeated depends entirely on the intelligence of the 

 pupil, or rather on his natural capacity for learning tricks. Some 

 yearlings seem to know almost intuitively what is required of 

 them, and at the second or third time of asking, jump from 

 * the mark ' like veteran ' sprinters ' ; others, again, may be 

 ' sharpened up ' twenty times without learning the business ; 

 fools they are born, and fools they will remain — not in the 

 sense meant by the Messrs. Graham, because they are fools 

 enough to like racing, but because, though they have the power, 

 they have not the sense to apply it. 



The regular trial, in which the merit or promise of merit in 

 a yearling is ascertained or guessed at, usually takes place over 

 three furlongs at weight for age with a selling plater ; and when 

 we consider what weight for age then is, and what selling platers 

 generally are, it must be admitted that the ordeal need not be 

 of a nature to dishearten the young one. Year after year we 

 are told of miraculous trials in which a baby has beaten a good 

 old horse at even, or at ridiculously small weights ; but, though 

 in rare cases there is some smattering of truth in these reports, 

 they may for the most part be assigned to the region of un- 

 adulterated fiction, while it may be laid down as an axiom that 

 the impossible is never accomplished. 



An ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept, and the 

 record of a few real trials will serve to show what may be ex- 

 pected of smart young ones, for the reproach of cetas pejor avis 

 cannot, we confidently assert, be quoted against the British 

 racehorse. 



K 



