44 England's horses, 



horse-breeding district. This sire has the favours of over 

 one hundred mares in a season ; a majority of his offspring 

 partake in a ratio of three to one of those objectionable 

 quahties that marked their sire. Still the owner, from any 

 cause you please, except the intrinsic worth of his stallion, 

 has gained the suffrages of his neighbours. Things go on 

 so while the horse lives, and, though prudence, common 

 sense, and judgment ought to prevent it, the horse is per- 

 mitted to entail upon posterity defects calculated not only 

 to punish an ignorant constituency, but to help to bring 

 about that national calamity of degeneracy through our 

 middle-class or half-bred horses, under which the country 

 absolutely groans at present. Our position was not less 

 pardonable than serious, being quite unable to keep up 

 the cavalry "strength" in "remounts" at a time when 

 the painful contiguity of dread wars and political compli- 

 cations were calculated to impress reflections productive of 

 a train of thought upon these subjects, that it -is to be 

 hoped in such a country as England, and amongst such a 

 clever, educated, and spirited people, jealous of her hardly 

 and gloriously won supremacy amidst the nations of the 

 globe, will bring about that calm and unbiassed enquiry 

 which anything of such great magnitude, and toucliing 

 upon national interest and honour, should be aAvarded. I 

 fervently cling to the hope, notwithstanding the censurable 

 apathy which exists as to the paramount influence of the 

 sire in propagation, and the unguided or ungoverned 

 exercise of individual judgment and interest in his selec- 

 tion, that out of our present richly earned necessities will 

 arise the future salvation of our general horses, and that 

 good wholesome alarm will enlist public sympathies on the 

 side of those innovators who have sounded the tocsin of 

 alarm, and denounced the deleterious system so long and 

 mischievously adopted generally by breeders of half-bred 

 horses. 



