vi. Introduction 



and secure more perfect adaptability to our present 

 requirements. 



The Horse as it was a century or more ago was not as 

 it is to-day. If we are not wedded to our own opinions 

 concerning equine characteristics of a hundred and fifty 

 years back, we can learn much from pictorial records. 

 There are some who look upon George Stubbs' portraits 

 of race-horses and exclaim "Impossible!" These in- 

 credulous ones who disdain what they can know nothing 

 of, may be reminded that great changes have been 

 brought about in the thoroughbred horse since Stubbs 

 lived and painted. Are they aware, for example, that 

 the average height of the race-horse in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century was one hand and a half less than 

 the average height of the race-horse at the end of the 

 nineteenth century ? 



Admiral the Hon. Henry John Rous, the greatest 

 authority on race-horses and racing, in Baiiys Magazine 

 of Sports and Pastimes, i860, writes: "A century ago 

 race-horses were about the average of 14 hands 2 inches. 

 . . . . I attribute the great growth and size of the 

 present thoroughbred horses to the care which is bestowed 

 upon them in early life." 



The thoroughbred ever since the middle of the last 

 century has been increasing in stature, on an average one 

 inch in twenty-five years, till we now seldom proclaim 

 him a race-horse of the first class unless he stands 15.3 to 

 16 hands. 



A worthy painter therefore deserves that we should 

 invest him with something of the character of the 

 historian. The statements of tongue or pen, unhappily, 

 are often capable of differing interpretations ; but the 

 painted record allows of little or no dispute. 



It is somewhat strange that no work has yet appeared 

 which chronicles the names and performances of those 



