424 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



don't know. Very often roaring springs from 

 horses having too much food and too little work. 

 I think horses getting ' fit ' has something to do 

 with roaring. I have known cases in my own 

 experience where horses have been roarers and 

 come right again. You have an instance in 

 Moorcock being a roarer and becoming sound 

 in his wind. My father bought Moorcock and 

 several other yearlings rather late in the autumn. 

 When Moorcock was put into work he was a 

 bad roarer; but as he got gradually into con- 

 dition the roaring left him. He was trained up 

 to a six-year-old, and was perfectly sound to the 

 end. What does that prove? I suppose he had 

 been a heavy 'doer/ which made him thick in 

 his inside, thereby affecting his wind, which 

 came right again with work. 



" No doubt the atmosphere has a deal to do 

 with roaring. A roarer will run a much better 

 race in nice, clear atmosphere than he will in 

 thick or damp. If you want to find a horse out 

 as a roarer, you give him a gallop on a thick, 

 foggy morning, and you'll hear him when you 

 cannot on a dry atmosphere. Once I had a mare 

 which was a very bad roarer, so bad, in fact, 

 that I don't think any veterinary surgeon in 

 England would have passed her. I rode her 

 about eight or ten weeks and she came all right. 

 You could then gallop her for fifty miles, if you 

 liked. As to the real cause of roaring, the ' vets.' 

 are as much in the dark now as they were a 

 hundred years ago. 



"With regard to conformation of horses, I 

 have seen them run in all shapes. Horses with 



