LIGHT HOESE. 191 



action ; a horse who has it not is, in my opinion, useless 

 for any honourable employment, but the kind of action 

 which I have deprecated is the clambering, round action 

 only fit, to my mind, for harness work in town, but 

 which is eagerly sought after by many purchasers of 

 remounts for cavalry. 



English remounts are chiefly Irish-bred horses, and are 

 very often mares, they being to be obtained at a less 

 price than horses, and so much the better for the cavalry, 

 at least I think so. Taking them with all their faults, I 

 prefer mares, in England, as troopers. The Arabs con- 

 sider that they bear privations better than horses ; I am 

 not so sure of this as regards entire horses, but they are 

 not used in the ranks in England. The trooper as seen 

 (say at Hounslow) is usually pretty well bred, and for the 

 most part looks worth a good deal more than the regu- 

 lation price, which used to be 25Z., then was raised to 30Z., 

 and has lately gone up again to 40Z. For the last price very 

 useful horses ought to be procured, if there were time to 

 look for them. Cheap bargains cannot be found by a pur- 

 chaser who is in a hurry, and the secret of 30Z. horses 

 turning out as well as the majority of troopers do is to 

 be found in the circumstance that the colonel can take 

 his time in his deals to this extent that he is never, in 

 time of peace, buying as it were against time ; so, when 

 an animal does not please him, he can send him to the 

 right-about, and depend with certainty on, there being 

 more where he came from. Thus, if a good judge, a 

 colonel never need buy " a brute '" but, unluckily, all 

 colonels are not good judges, horses being amongst the 

 few things that a man may pass his life in the midst of 

 without ever learning much about them, unless he have a 

 natural inclination that way. Still, troop horses are, as a 



