COMPARATIVE STOUTNESS 



93 



stone, the stallions and mares which are put to the stud here and abroad, 

 and the unsound animals of both sexes, it is equally astonishing that the 

 demand should be so well supplied as it is, and that there should bo any 

 horses able to stay a distance left. The owner of a horse will always do 

 with him what he considers most to his own advantage, and, whereas 

 formerly he had no choice but either to sell an aged horse as a hack, or to 

 keep him in training, he now teaches him to get over a hurdle and a few- 

 fences, and he has a dozen customers ready for him at eight or ten times 

 the old hack price. I do not for a moment contend that even the most 

 valuable of these hunters are as sound on their legs as the average of race- 

 horses fifty or a hundred years ago, but that they are as stout, T think, is 

 quite clear, and the reason of their being more unsound is only that they 

 are sooner used up. A railway locomotive will only travel a definite 

 number of miles, varying in relation to the speed at which it is used, and 

 if it is brought 011 to the rails before it is in perfect working order, it will 

 very much sooner fail. So in the present day, from the facilities of 

 travelling from place to place, and from the length of the racing season, 

 our horses, when in training, have little or no rest, and thus, though their 

 career is a short one, " the candle is burnt at both ends " while it is alight, 

 and it is consumed in half the time. Look at the performances of Rataplan, 

 Fisherman, and Thornmanby, and compare them with the much-vaunted 

 feats of the Carlisle Gelding in 1720 to 1731, and of Black Chance from 

 1736 to 1746. Even the still more celebrated Catherina, who ran one 

 hundred and seventy-seven races in ten years, did not work half so hard on 

 the racecourse as Fisherman with his one hundred and twenty races in five 

 years. 



IN SPITE, HOWEVER, of all the elaborate calculations which others as well 

 as myself have made, I cannot quite divest myself of the belief that Lord 

 Redesdale is correct in his assumption that the thoroughbred horse of the 

 present day is on the average less stout than he was of yore. That there 

 are some few which can race and also stay I firmly believe, and that many 

 which cannot race but can stay, are early drafted into the hunting-stable, 

 is also my opinion ; but that the majority are deficient in stoutness seems 



