COMPAKATIYE ESTIMATE 



SPEED, BOTTOM, POWERS AND VALUE OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN 

 RACERS, IN THE PRESENT AND PAST CENTURY. 



There has been now, for several years, a general if not preva- 

 lent opinion, sustained bj manj persons, not merely laudor 

 tores temporis acti — arguing, however, on theory rather than on 

 experience, and founding their arguments on facts, in them- 

 selves questionable, and assumed on little more than mere ru- 

 mor — that the modern race-horse has degenerated, both in speed 

 and stoutness, from his renowned English ancestry ; and sec- 

 ondly, that the tendency of modern breeding — or as, at least, 

 one writer terms it, too thorough breeding — has been to en- 

 courage speed at the expense of bottom, and so to detract detri- 

 mentally from the stanchness and endurance of the modern 

 race-horse ; and, lastly, that by the system of training young, 

 and running short courses, the English race-horse has fallen be- 

 hind its American descendant in the ability to run long dis- 

 tances. 



The first of these assumptions, that the race-horse of the 

 nineteenth century, whether English or American, has degen- 

 erated from the famous worthies of the eighteenth, and if so, 

 whether young training and short racing are the causes of such 

 degeneracy, are matters well worthy of consideration. 



Tliat of the comparative qualities of the English and Ameri- 

 can race-horse, is less so, and only so at all, inasmuch as it is 

 connected with the different systems of training and running 

 Vol. I.— 23 



