102 HOESES AND EIDING. 



CHAPTER XY. 



COLOUR. 



Although I have stated that colour is chiefly a 

 matter of taste, jet there are generally to be found 

 certain qualities attached to certain colours, which it 

 would be as well to mention. 



As a rule, rich good shades of any colour are both 

 better animals and more saleable than bad shades of 

 the same colour. Thus, though it is very much a 

 matter of taste whether a chestnut or a bay is pre- 

 ferred, and one has no intrinsic merit over the other, 

 yet a good bay or chestnut is both better and worth 

 more, than a bad shade of either of those two colours. 

 It would also I think be found, that while colour 

 was no indication of blood, that shade would be found 

 to he an indication of it, and that the better bred a 

 horse was, the more likely he would be, to be of a 

 rich good shade of whatever colour he was. Thus, if 

 you took any number, say a hundred, of racehorses, 

 and a like number selected at random of horses of 

 no breeding, it would be found that while there was 



