Breeding of Hunters. 273 



where he was put up with three other of Mr. Quarter- 

 maine's, whose sale he would have injured if the 

 private offer had been accepted, for 820 guineas 

 to Mr. Anderson, who made, it was said, noo 

 guineas for him, and the public heard of him no 

 more. The Messrs. Hall, late of Neasdon, got 565 

 guineas for a hunter from a Crimean officer, shortly 

 before he sailed, but its price fell sixty per cenc. 

 at least when it was put up for auction a few months 

 afterwards. No such price has, to our knowledge, 

 been given for a hunter for many a long day, and 

 the last seven-hundred-guinea hunter within our 

 memory was a bay half-bred Arab, who first changed 

 hands at 3O/., when his jumping powers were still 

 under a bushel. At TattersalTs in May 1856, eleven 

 out of one stud averaged 283^ guineas ; and in one 

 week of May 1857, eight top prices from five studs 

 averaged 305 J guineas, though the average was 

 enormously swelled by Lord Stamford's 560 guinea 

 purchase of Mr. A. Thomson's splendid sixteen-two 

 bay Maximus by Cotherstone, who carried him so 

 splendidly in his I h. 30 m. Claydon's Wood run. 

 Thirteen at the Quorn sale just averaged 294 guineas, 

 thanks to the frost. We have seldom seen a lot of 

 horses with better backs, quarters, and shoulders, 

 than the late Sir Richard Sutton's, but many of them 

 seemed to have remarkably plain heads, a remark 

 which does not apply to the Milton hunting stud. 

 The 36o-guinea Shankton was originally sold by Mr. 

 Pratt to Sir Richard for 8o/., when he was rising six, 

 and a five-pound note extra if he turned out well. 

 He is an Irish horse, perhaps a trifle short, and with 

 not very nice legs, but very fine in all his other points. 

 Somerby was so great in his jumping, that his old 

 Leicestershire friends predicted of him that " he 

 would jump two fields at once" when he was once set 

 going across Cheshire, and we have perhaps never 

 stood behind a horse in that stable with greater 



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