4 I2 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



the game will be spoilt by every player knowing what he is going to get out of 

 the pack, and how to get it. 



Before the Committee of the House of Lords on horse-breeding, in 1873, 

 some very interesting evidence was given by the best experts of the day. For 

 fifty years previously Admiral Rous had seen every thoroughbred on the Turf, and 

 for thirty years he had carefully noted all their performances. His opinion was that 

 we had enormously improved upon the crude productions of our ancestors, and he 

 adduced the relative size of race-horses at different periods as a proof of his 

 contentions, a method of argument which takes it for granted that size and substance 



are indispensable. This 

 may or may not be true 

 in certain cases, but it 

 is by no means axio- 

 matic. The gallant Ad- 

 miral's figures are, how- 

 ever, of the highest 

 interest. " In 1700," he 

 is reported to have 

 testified, " the average 

 size of the thorough- 

 bred was thirteen hands 

 three inches, and it has 

 increased an inch every 

 twenty-five years since. 



* 



Now the average height 



of our race-horses is fifteen hands three inches, and twelve are in training of 

 no less than seventeen hands." 



Prince Charlie at once occurs to me as an example of a seventeen-hand horse, 

 and extraordinary he was, too, for a mile. But he was a roarer, as so many animals 

 of his size seem disposed to be. It is worth noting, however, that, with all the five 

 or six-furlong events now popular, we do not seem to succeed in producing first-rate 

 sprinters as some compensation for an undoubted loss in staying power. In 1902, 

 for instance, Orchid (by no means a large horse) won the Temple Handicap at 

 Sandown Park with 9 stone 7 pounds on his back, and proved to be faster than 

 Sundridge, Cossack, Elizabeth M., or Lord Bobs, the best of our flyers over a short 



--=s-saS*aBaBl 



' I'espa" (1830) by ". 



