62 The Book of the Horse. 



and 138 yards) at Newmarket within eiglit minutes, which in my younger days I used to see 

 constantly done. 



" You can hardly persuade gentlemen to run four miles, because they can win large 

 sums in running short races,* and their horses can come out oftener. I am afraid that it is 

 more a question of winning money than it used to be eighty years ago, when there were a 

 vast number of persons who took a great pride in breeding horses of a different stamp. I 

 dare say that at Goodwood for the last ten years there have not been more than three horses 

 entered for the Queen's Plates, and these have walked half the distance." 



The evidence of General Peel.f which conforms neither to the opinion of Admiral Rous 

 nor to the melancholy forebodings of the Earl of Stradbroke, perhaps presents the fairest 

 picture of the present condition of the British blood-horse. General Peel had " had fifty 

 years' experience as a breeder of horses, having, in conjunction with liis brother, Mr. Edmund 

 Peel, bred his first animal in 182 1, a filly which ran second to the Earl of Jersey's Cobweb 

 in the Oaks in 1824." He considered that "there are quite as good horses now as at any 

 former period, but that there are more bad ones bred in proportion to the total number, in 

 consequence of the whole system of breeding being altered. 



" Formerly the proprietors of race-horses were the breeders of them. They had their 

 own brood-mares, their own paddocks ; they carefully selected the sire that would suit each 

 mare, and they kept the produce entirely for their own racing. At that time it was very 

 difficult to purchase yearlings, now nine-tenths of tlie horses are bred for sale. When, some 

 years ago, very large prices were given (at sales by auction) for yearlings, the supply quickly 

 followed the demand. Everybody took to breeding, and stud sales were organised all over 

 the country. More horses are bred (there were nearly three thousand thorough-bred mares 

 last season), and more bad ones, because breeders for sale put all their mares to the stallions 

 they purchase or hire, whether the cross is most suitable or not. 



"This opinion is sustained by the fact that although there are very few private as compared 

 with public breeders, almost all great stakes are won by animals bred by private breeders." 



But the object of this chapter is not to discuss racing and its drawbacks, moral and 

 physical, which are as inevitable as other mental and bodily diseases of civilised life, but to 

 sketch with a rapid hand how the love of country sports, how the love of riding, of hunting, 

 of wagering on matches, and, finally, the concentration of the gambling spirit (in which in 

 some form all civilised and semi-civilised nations indulge) on horse-racing has, in less than 

 a century, laid' the foundation of the finest breed of horses in the world. Without the race- 

 course the English blood-horse would never have existed. We must take the good with 

 the bad of that as of other truly English Institutions. At any rate, it is quite certain that 

 to revert to the old style of four-mile races at heavy weights is as impossible as to reproduce 

 long whist in good society, or go back from iron steam-driven war-ships to the wooden 

 sailing frigates which Admiral Rous so infinitely preferred, for the admiral was strictly con- 

 servative on every question except that on which his clients (in the Roman sense), the betting 

 fraternity, thrive. Large vested interests have been created and are supported by the modern 

 system of infant horses, short distances, and all the chances of stakes of thousands, and 

 wagers of tens of thousands. Whether it promotes breeding sound and useful blood-horses 

 is quite another question. 



• ;{^8o,ooo \v.is won in bels on one race by one person in 1873. 



f Lvidencc of General the Right Honourable Jonallian IVel before .Select Cuniniittee on Supjily of Horses. 



