CONCLUSION. 305 



breaking of the colt and his following preparation, his 

 subsequent performances in trials and in public, are subjects 

 demanding the ample treatment which has been given to 

 them ; and the method followed will hardly be charged with 

 redundancy, which, at the worst, would be less censurable 

 than incompleteness. The chapters on betting, on the scandals 

 of the race-course, and the present one on attacks on the turf, 

 are open possibly to the charge of being the least cognate to 

 the subject. As such they are, I am free to confess, the least 

 satisfactory to myself; but, on the other hand, they are not 

 absolutely foreign to our examination, and, indeed, it is hoped 

 may in some fashion serve to round it off. I may add that 

 the suggestions for reform which fill Chapter XXVI., as well 

 as the earlier comments on the light-weight jockeys, have, I 

 am fully convinced, every warrant for their amplification in 

 any work on the racehorse. If any doubt that the conduct of 

 the young jockeys is an evil loudly crying for redress, let him 

 attend the room next the weighing-room after one of the 

 large handicaps, and he will find that if their faults have 

 not here been extenuated, at least nought has been set down 

 in malice. 



If nothing more is required to be said specially on other 

 points, I may yet venture to submit that the whole, as an 

 original work, has had to contend with many difficulties in the 

 endeavour to eliminate golden truths from popular errors, and 

 to avoid plagiarism. 



It has been my studied object throughout not to weary the 

 reader by giving a detailed account where it was unnecessary 

 or punctiliously to define matters and things when the bare, 

 name was sufficient. For instance, when physic is recom- 

 mended, I merely mention it. I have not said what it should 

 be composed of, or the quantity sufficient for the dose, or the 



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