122 A PROMISING BARGAIN. 



to? why, he will have no chance with any thing but 

 a road waggon when brought out to run. 



There can be no doubt but many valuable race- 

 horses are lost by the obstinacy and prejudice of 

 trainers : they take a dislike to a colt ; fancy he can't 

 be good: what is the consequence? The owner of 

 course wishes him to be tried. Now a horse re- 

 quires to be pretty much in the same condition to be 

 fairly tried as he does to race. This unfortunate 

 colt will not be got into this condition ; takes his 

 trial, and of course is beaten by the more favoured 

 ones " as they like : " the trainer's prognostic is 

 fulfilled (nobody could doubt that), the bill is paid, 

 the colt is sold by Messrs. Tattersall, and " so much 

 for Buckingham." It is quite certain that the best 

 trainers and the most enlightened men in their busi- 

 ness are the best men to send a horse to ; that is, 

 if they will exert their knowledge and abilities in his 

 favour : but if they will not, though they may have 

 a head, their not using it is as fatal to the horse 

 and his owner as if they had no head at all. 



I can exemplify a little of the effects of trainers' 

 disliking a horse by a case in point. I bought a horse 

 which had been in a public training establishment ; 

 he was a bad one at best, and, what was worse, a 

 nervous, fretful, and at all times a very difficult and 

 vicious one to dress. He had run several times, and 

 never won, nor had a chance of winning any thing. 

 When I bought him, he had not an ounce of flesh or 

 muscle on his bones, and looked as blooming in his 

 coat as a singed cat, and she with the hair turned the 

 wrong way : in fact, I took him in exchange for an 

 unpromising yearling, or I should never have got 

 him. Now it required no great share of head to see 



