150 The Book of the Horse. 



his knees, will not only unseat nine good horsemen out of ten, but at times actually force the saddle 

 over his withers, if he does not succeed in bursting the girth. 



" I was fortunate," says the colonel, " in possessing several excellent saddle and driving 

 horses, amongst them a pair of carriage-horses of such figure and action as are not often out- 

 done in Rotten Row. 



"My faithful Merriman, who served me during the whole period of my stay in Australia, I 

 doomed to a merciful death two days before I left the country, bringing away with me as a relic 

 his splendid mane, attached to a strip of the skin. The hair is twenty-si.K inches long; and the 

 'rein,' i.e., the space along the side of the neck from the spot where the mane springs on the 

 wither to the root of the forelock, measures the uncommon length of four feet seven inches. 



"His height was under 15 hands 3 inches; steady, yet spirited as a charger, gentle and 

 safe as a lady's horse, honest at the wheel, fiery yet tractable as a leader, old Merriman was one 

 in a thousand." 



The deterioration of Australian horse stock is to be ascribed to the bad custom of permitting 

 a herd of horses and mares to run loose together without any attempt at weeding or selection. 



The great horse-breeders in California adopt a plan copied, we presume, from their Spanish 

 predecessors. Thej^ pick out a stallion and about forty mares, corral them — that is, keep them in a 

 pound for a certain number of days — and then turn them out to the open pasture plains. The 

 mares then keep to the horse, and the horse permits no intrusion, at least not until he has been 

 defeated in pitched battle by some rival sire. 



Nice intelligent little boys are to be met with in France and Germany by travellers of 

 paternal instincts, some e.xtraordinary musicians and capital dancers ; but we fancy that such 

 precocity as described in the following contrast is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon breed : — 



" At the Marine Hotel the post of waiter was filled by a lad about twelve years old, the son 

 of our landlord. He brought up our meals, waited at table, joined in conversation, drew and 

 helped to drink the wine, knew everybody and everything about the place. He constituted himself 

 my guide in our rides to see the lions of the neighbourhood ; assuring me that his three-year-old 

 filly, by Young Theorem out of a 'Scamp mare,' was nearly clean bred, that he had broken 

 her himself and that she was a pleasant hack." 



"A highly-entertaining scene is the driving in from their pastures of a 'mob' of young horses. 

 Two or three mounted stockmen had started by daybreak to hunt up the number required. 

 About ten o'clock the sound of the stock-whip — an awful implement, having twelve or fourteen 

 feet of heavy thong to two feet of handle, and crackable only by a practised hand — accompanied 

 by loud shouts, and a rushing sound like the stampede of the South American pampas, announced 

 the coming of the cavalry. They came sweeping round the garden fence at full speed, shrouded 

 in a whirlwind of dust, and in a few minutes, snorting, kicking, and fighting, about 150 horses 

 were driven within the stock-yard, surrounded by stout railings seven or eight feet high. 



"The highest leaps I ever saw were taken on this occasion by some of the wild young colts; 

 more than one heavy, perhaps ruinous, fall was the result." 



Tasmania, formerly known as Van Diemen's Land, is the "Sleepy Hollow" of the Australian 

 colonies. With a magnificent climate, warm yet temperate, without the drawback of the violent 

 winds and snow-storms that affect New Zealand, it vegetates for want of elbow-room in pastures 

 and the stimulus of mineral wealth. 



"On the way to the racecourse," writes Colonel Mundy, "we were passed by a dog-cart or 

 two driven by young farmers; by fast-trotting hacks ridden by rustic beaux in tops and cords, 

 straw hats and hunting-whips. 



