22 



LIGHT HORSES I BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



which some racing men will breed from roarers, and the deter- 

 mination of the hunter division to have none of them, seems 

 to be very much as though a man should willingly defile a 

 reservoir, while another person should be very particular as 

 to the purity of the water he draws from the pipe fed by the 

 impure reservoir. Had the Duke of Westminster gone into 

 his picture gallery and sold his ancestors, he could not have 

 been more soundly abused than he was for selling Ormonde ; 

 yet that that once great horse left his country for his country's 

 good is as certain as that the Duke would not have parted 

 with him for any money had he, in his opinion, been fit to 

 breed from. It is proverbial that a man, when about to 

 choose a horse, must use his own discretion, but when for 

 breeding purposes he selects an unsound one, he is doing his 

 share towards propagating a race of unsound horses, and, 

 as we said just now, this disqualifies him from pleading that 

 the improvement of the breed of horses underlies the claim 

 of racing to support. 





