222 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



balancing that or any other bad points in the horse. 

 We remember a remarkable instance of a mare, who 

 had hunted with fifteen stone, and been driven and rid- 

 den on the road with little cessation till she was nearly 

 twenty; and although neithsr she nor the young 

 horse she was then sent to had ever been doctored 

 for a curb, or shown any symptoms of one, her two 

 foals had their hind legs as curved as scythes, and 

 age only very partially removed their deformity. 

 Apropos of the subject of hard work, which may 

 have had its effect on the Crucifix stock, it is worthy 

 of note that Rebecca, the dam of Alice Hawthorne, 

 Rowena, Annandale, and Fair Helen (the dam of 

 Lord of the Hills and Lord of the Isles), never did 

 a day's work in her life. In fact, we have it from 

 her late owner, who leased her for several years before 

 his death to Mr. Andrew Johnstone, that, to the best 

 of his belief, neither she nor her dam, nor her gran- 

 dam, had ever been broken in. Meteora, Plover, and 

 Violante, who were all of them in Lord Grosvenor's 

 hands at one time, never had a foal worth its corn. 



Whether it be politic to breed from a roarer or, 

 politely speaking (with a fear of a Nisi Prius before 

 our eyes), " a high blower" is still a fierce moot- 

 point. This infirmity is unfortunately becoming 

 more and more the rule instead of the exception ; 

 and if all the thorough-bred animals so afflicted were 

 offered up a sacrifice to ^Eolus on Newmarket Heath, 

 he would snuff the scent of at least two hecatombs 

 a year. We have met with many who assert that it 

 has increased among hunters very considerably since 

 the habit of turning them out for a summer's run 

 was abandoned that in fact they have become 

 roarers from stable idleness, and an inability to 

 throw off, in that confined atmosphere, any throat 

 ulceration they may have contracted. It has been 

 gravely laid down as a great principle, that the 

 throats of all " talking " blood sires should at once 



