298 The Post and the Paddock. 



so stout timbered as we expected to see them. Their 

 neighbour, Meteor, will have a hard task to follow 

 Belzoni, and if his stock grow up like himself, great 

 bone and power, combined with plainish foreheads, 

 Roman noses, and chestnut skins, will not perish out 

 of the neighbourhood of Lutterworth. From the sires 

 which the Duke of Richmond, the late Lord Egre- 

 mont, and Sir John Shelley brought into the county, 

 the principal jumping blood of Sussex is derived ; 

 and Gohanna, Grey Skim, and Whalebone were only 

 three out of a host which all tenanted the Petworth 

 paddocks in their turn, and whose descendants have 

 worked their way to the fore, like those of their 

 kennel brethren the Justices, and the Jaspers, in many 

 an English hunting-field. Whalebone was sold at 

 Tattersall's for 500 guineas to the Duke of Grafton 

 after Lord Egremont's death, and he was generally 

 thought a plainish-looking horse with decidedly small 

 feet. This was the great failing of Soothsayer, who 

 had one of the finest tops that ever fell to a horse's 

 lot, combined with feet little bigger than a mule's. 

 He was one of the descendants of Sorcerer, who sadly 

 poisoned the breed of horses, as far as soundness goes. 

 His stock had very great speed, and he got many of 

 the best racers of the day ; but nearly all of them 

 were infirm after a certain time. He was upright in 

 his pasterns and light in his ankles, and never, that 

 we heard of, got a hunter worth a farthing. The 

 Sorcerer mares threw many very good foals, but 

 they were chiefly put to the horse at four or five 

 years old. 



In the first quarter of the century, Norfolk had 

 an almost European fame for its strong-made, short- 

 legged hackneys, which ranged from fourteen-three 

 to fifteen-two, and could walk five miles an hour, and 

 trot at the rate of twenty. Fireaway, Marshland 

 Shales, and The Norfolk Cob were locomotive giants 

 in those days, and the latter was the sire of Pheno- 



