Are our Blood Horses Deteriorated f 6i 



lidi'se matters, convey a very false idea of our best thoroughbreds, considering tiiem as horses, 

 and not as racing machines. 



The merits of Flying Childers, Eclipse, and other " Conscript Fathers " of the British 

 race-horse, and the traditional accounts of their performances, are not accepted without dispute. 

 Influential parties connected \\ ith the turf hold very opposite opinions ; one that the British 

 horse is very much deteriorated, the other that he is very much improved. Perhaps they are 

 looking at different sides of the same shield ; perhaps one is thinking only of the perfection to 

 which the art of winning and losing money in one afternoon at Newmarket has arrived, and 

 the other of the number of " terrible " high-bred sires perambulating the country to propagate 

 every kind of hereditary unsoundness and malformation. 



Before a Lords' Committee on Horse Supply in 1873 the question of deterioration was 

 incidentally raised, and elicited evidence of a very contradictory character. 



The late Admiral the Honourable Henry Rous, " who is sorry to say that for upwards of 

 fifty years he has observed every thorough-bred horse of racing reputation, and for the last 

 thirty years has noted down every night of his life the results of every race," as a preparation 

 for " handicapping many thousand horses," has the greatest contempt for these racing gods of the 

 old generation of Englishmen, and utterly disbelieves in the racing merit of Childers and Eclipse. 



He told the Lords' Committee that "in 1700 the average size of the thorough-bred horse 

 was 13 hands 3 inches, and that since that date it iiad been increasing an inch every twenty- 

 five years." He must have meant the ordinary size, because in 1740 pony racing was declared 

 illegal. Herod (1758), was 15 hands 3 inches; Eclipse (1764), over 15^ hands; Jupiter (1774), 

 15 liands I inch ; and these were what may be called representative horses. It must not be 

 forgotten, in discussing this historical question of height, that tall Turcoman horses may have 

 been imported and used, and called Arabs. 



"At present," said the admiral, "the average height of the race-horse is 15 hands 3 inches, 

 and there are not less than twelve horses in training which are 17 hands high, a thing not 

 known fifty years ago ; " but as the admiral admitted that Prince Charlie, " the best horse 

 in the world for a mile, and 17 hands high, was a roarer," and that "tall horses are more 

 frequently roarers than small horses," it does not seem that the breed of English horses is 

 likely to derive any more benefit from these equine giants than the Prussian nation did from 

 King Frederick William I.'s Patagonian regiment of body guards. 



The Earl of Stradbroke, the brother of the great handicapper * and oracle of the racing 

 world, held (as will be seen in the following extract from his evidence before the same Committee) 

 a totally different opinion ; but then he is a zealous county gentleman, interested in providing 

 the Suffolk breeders with sound and useful stallions. 



" For more than sixty jears I have had great experience in breeding all sorts of horses, 

 and have taken great interest in their enduring qualities. At one time of my life I bred a 

 great many thorough-bred horses. I believe that horses have deteriorated of late years. 



" Queen's Plates were originally given for horses to carry heavy weights and run long 

 distances. In the last century, and in the beginning of this century, there were a great 

 many valuable horses that could run three or four miles without the slightest trouble or injury 

 of any kind, but now that description of animal does not exist. My firm belief is that there 

 are not four horses in England now that could run over the Beacon course (4 miles I furlong 



* The art of handicapping consists in bringing horses of different .ages and speed as nearly as possible together, by imposing 

 graduated weight in proportion to their previous public ))erformances. 



