FOR PEACE AND WAR. H 



CHAPTER 11. 



My object is to lay before all who prize the horse, from a 

 love of the animal, or from sordid or prudential motives, 

 my views as to the great danger in which Ave stand of really 

 losing him altogether as a sound and useful animal, because 

 of the many causes that have been for years progressively 

 co-operating to deteriorate that class of horses from which 

 we derive many hunters, our hackney and harness horses, 

 and, we may say, all our re-mounts for cavalry and mounted 

 Artillery. I shall endeavour to point out the causes from 

 which a numerical as well as physical falling off in the 

 supply and its character has taken place, and the means 

 which I fancy would, as effect from cause, eventually put 

 things right again. 



As nations, like individuals, are capable of deriving 

 benefit and wholesome instruction from example ; consider- 

 ing England's long and censurable apathy with regard to 

 that middle or half-bred class of horses that in past time 

 she so successfully and ardently founded and maintained, a 

 reference to a similar national crime or folly, in connection 

 with a like subject, by no less a power than that of ancient 

 Rome, in the plenitude of her greatness, and its decading 

 consequences may be worth contemplation here. At least, 

 the example is not without its most suggestive moral. The 

 students of equine literature need not be told that I owe 

 my following facts to authors of established repute. 



