54 RACEHORSES IN AUSTRALIA 



a question which is indeed a hard one to determine, and one great camp may- 

 give its voices to the "Ayes," and one may roar in unison for "No." 



There is one thing, and perhaps only one thing, quite certain. Our 

 horse has increased in size. The fifteen-hands-two of the great winners of a 

 hundred years ago have swollen in their average dimensions somewhere in 

 the neighbourhood of sixteen-two. This may not, however, indicate all- 

 round improvement. A good big one, we know, is better than a good little 

 one on the course, but I question if the rule holds good, either in the battle or 

 the hunting-field. Ormonde beat The Bard because he outstrode him down 

 the Epsom hill, but The Bard might have carried his master, with his twelve 

 stone ten, had he had the opportunity, more safely and more speedily to the 

 end of a forty minutes run, than his great conqueror on the race course ovei 

 the mile and a half of Epsom Downs. 



And we have gained in speed. There can be little doubt of that. If 

 the inexorable test of the "Winning Post" has not compelled us to breed 

 from our best, and if, in the course of the flying centuries, the result has not 

 been a march upwards, then Heaven help us and our methods. But do you 

 think that stamina and soundness have improved along with our size and our 

 speed? That, too, is hard to tell. And yet it is probable that it is so. Races 

 now are real tests of the stayer. In the days of Fisherman, and Voltigeur, 

 The Flying Dutchman, Plenipotentiary, Bay Middleton, and before their time, 

 races were not run in a manner to prove stamina. More frequently there was 

 much loitering on the way in the two, three, and four mile bouts between the 

 steeds of our ancestors. To-day we run the two miles all the way from pillar 

 to post, and Archer's three minutes and fifty-two seconds for the Melbourne 

 Cup has dwindled to the three twenty-four and a half claimed by Artilleryman. 

 Twenty-seven seconds difference means at least two furlongs, and that takes 

 catching. Well, admitting that we have marched forwards in the matter of 

 both speed and stamina, surely there is much more unsoundness to-day than 

 there was one hundred years ago, or even fifty years since. At the first blush 

 one would say "Yes." But on second thoughts one does not feel quite so 

 sure. Herod was "a bleeder," and bleeding has been not uncommon in his 

 descendants. It is one hundred and sixty-four years ago since Herod was 

 foaled. We rear regiments of racers now, where our forebears bred squad- 

 rons. And yet "bleeding" is not so very rife after all. But we hear more 

 about it, with an active press focussing its microscope on every individual 

 racer in the land. And roaring, you ask? Well, Pocahontas roared, and 

 Prince Charlie made a fearful noise, and Belladrum was indistinguishable 

 from a fog-horn, and Ormonde did more than whistle, but in Australia, at 

 least, this is a defect, an actual unsoundness, which we do not so very often 

 see — or hear. But we are breeding bad knees, bad feet, and round joints, 

 and with the extra weight of the enlarged frames, ligaments and muscles 

 cannot bear the strain. Yet this was always so. Bay Middleton had a mys- 

 terious foot and leg. Whalebone's near fore-foot was contracted, and all were 

 "pumiced " — whatever that might mean. He was "the most double-jointed 

 horse I ever saw in my life," was the verdict of that celebrity's groom. White- 

 lock was "a naggish horse with a big, coarse head and plumb forelegs." Flat, 

 thin-soled feet were the "bane of lazy Lanercost," Rataplan "always went 

 proppy on his long fore pasterns," and "Dundee's suspensory ligament went 

 so badly in the Derby that after that race his fetlock nearly touched the 

 ground." Partisan had a "clubby foot." Touchstone had "very fleshy legs," 

 and his "near fore ankle was never very good." And so on we could go, 

 from the Adam of horses to our own most rapid, modern times, which these 



