232 The Book of the Horse. 



number of races are for a distance of six furlongs, with weights not exceeding and generally 

 under eight stone ten pounds, as a racehorse is old ("the old horse") at six years, and as the 

 many sporting newspapers proclaim far and wide the temporary triumph of animals which have 

 snatched a handicap race of six furlongs, carrying six stone, it is not astonishing that many 

 sires get custom which are anything but calculated to get "sound and useful horses." A man 

 purchases the son, the grandson, or the cousin five times removed, of one of these wretched 

 handicap winners, for a low price, prints a card of his pedigree more or less true, travels him 

 at two to three guineas a m.are, and gets plenty of custom — first because the fee is low, and 

 next because the customers are smitten with a superstitious and ignorant admiration for the 

 triumphs of the turf. They desire to breed a horse that can walk and trot ; nevertheless, they 

 select a sire that, if he can do anything, can only gallop, with perhaps imperfect wind, bad 

 feet, straight ankles, low withers, and a vicious temper. 



' Lavengro describes the Irish cob on which he took his first ride "as barely 15 hands high, 

 but he had the girth of a metropolitan dray-horse ; his head was small in comparison with his 

 immense neck, which curved down nobly to his wide back ; his chest was broad and fine, his 

 shoulders models of symmetry and strength ; he stood well and powerfully upon his legs, which 

 were somewhat short — in a word, a gallant specimen of the genuine Irish cob, a species at one 

 time not uncommon, but at present nearly extinct." " There," said the groom, " with sixteen 

 stone on his back he will trot fourteen miles in one hour, and clear a six-foot wall at the end 

 of it." 



But although riding-horses of great endurance are scarce, this country possesses the breed, 

 which only requires careful selection and cultivation in those colonies and countries where the 

 road and railroad luxuries of England are not to be had, to be reproduced in their pristine 

 excellence. This has repeatedly been proved in Australia and South Africa, and in the crosses 

 of the English with Continental horses in Germany and Italy. 



