40 WANT OF CONDITION. 



water ' (hateful term), he is forthwith pronounced by 

 his attendant faculty, with the utmost assurance, to be 

 ' bang up to the mark.' The result is, that the race is 

 run in which this poor creature is able to take no part, 

 and his owner, who perhaps knows his horse to be a 

 good and fast hunter, believes him incapable, notwith- 

 standing, of performing successfully against horses of 

 his own calibre, and attributes his defeat to want of 

 pace, and more frequently to want of stoutness ; when, 

 in numerous instances, he is wanting in neither, but 

 terribly wanting in fitness for the task he was called 

 upo?i to perform; and thus frequently a good sports- 

 man, not wishing again to figure so ingloriously, re- 

 frains from ever entering the lists on future occasions, 

 and so the support of many honourable sportsmen (and 

 they are sadly wanting in these days) is entirely lost, 

 and the sport of hunt and welter flat races and steeple- 

 chases, which, whatever cavillers may say, encourage 

 the breed of horses most universally in demand in all 

 parts of the world, becomes sadly depreciated, and 

 maintains only a flickering existence. 



It is frequently urged that gentlemen have no busi- 

 ness to train their own horses; that they can send 

 them to trainers and have them brought to the post in 

 as high a state of condition as skill and experience can 

 effect. But the numerous huntraces in which horses 

 that have been in training-stables are either excluded, 

 disqualified, or penalised, must ever be an answer to 

 this. I am, however, ready here to admit that any 

 trainer of skill could bring a horse to the post at least 



