94 IRISH HUNTERS, AND 



of young animals of a superior and valuable description. 

 We would therefore suggest that prizes for young ones 

 should be more liberally and generally awarded at 

 exhibitions ; likewise a careful revision and alteration 

 of many of the present regulations in connection with 

 racing. 



The importance of most careful scrutiny in selecting 

 the progenitors of horses can never be overrated ; and 

 though in Ireland experience has proved in many in- 

 stances that a good hunter can be produced from a dam 

 which, in England, would be considered too small, too 

 plain, the blood in both parents has invariably been of 

 the best. The mare, or perhaps her parents, might 

 have been half-starved — no uncommon result of the 

 scarcity of food during many successive years of adver- 

 sity among the poorer classes in the former country — 

 but her progenitors had been large powerful animals. 



As, in the due course of things, it results in time that 

 every denomination of useful horse, excepting, perhaps, 

 the heavy dray and cart horse breeds, is influenced by 

 the characteristics transmitted more particularly to the 

 powerful, enduring, moderately fleet animal properly 

 designated the hunter, it is a subject of deep interest 

 to the community at large to know how the latter 

 should be produced. 



The " Irish hunter" is admitted to possess in a re- 

 markable manner the qualities most desirable in a horse 

 of that or the generally useful class. Hardy, enduring, 

 courageous, strong, short -legged, short -backed, long- 

 sided, tolerably fast, but any deficiency in speed made 

 up for by jumping power; all action, able to jump any- 

 thing and everything; intuitive lovers of fencing; their 

 sagacity such that you have only to get on their backs 



