INFERIORITY OP^ THE OLD RACERS. 6b\) 



■we now possess. It is an inference, but nothing more. When 

 their horses ran their four-mile heats, they did not on all occa- 

 sions go their best pace throughout ; and it may be doubted 

 whether the majority of the races which were run, in 1754, were 

 80 well calculated to try the lasting powers of horses, as many 

 of the races which took place in 1854." 



Thus far " Cecil," and thus far conclusively. I, however, 

 aspire to go farther, and contend, that — although it be not sus- 

 ceptible of mathematical demonstration that Eclipse, Flying 

 Childers, Regulus, Highflyer and others were not faster than 

 the best modern horses — there is no earthly reason for suppos- 

 ing that they were so, but rather the reverse. Dismissing, as 

 the merest vulgar fables, the mile-in-a-minute stories, I have 

 already shown that the other recorded time-trials of Flying 

 Childers, even if granted to be true, are not so marvellous or so 

 far beyond the reach of modern racers, as seems generally to be 

 held. 



But these were only secret trials, and reliance cannot be placed 

 upon them. In fact, it is exceedingly doubtful to me, whether in 

 the days of Flying Childers, there were watches in existence by 

 which seconds could be stopped and counted with accuracy. At 

 all events, it is clear that the whole reputation of these so-styled 

 phenomena, rests on their extraordinary superiority to all the 

 horses of their own day. But the moment that it is established, 

 as " Cecil " has, I think, clearly established it, that the general 

 run of horses of that day were iniinitely inferior to the general run 

 of horses of this, in all the points wherein they most strenuously 

 claimed superiority ; the ease with which they were beaten by 

 the few true racers of the day is readily accounted for — and the 

 iact that they were easily beaten confers no such extraordinary 

 renown, nor presupposes the necessity of any such superior 

 powers in the victors. 



Again, as to the four-mile-heat races, I deny utterly the 

 superiority of the horse of the olden time to the modern, in this 

 species of sport, as I do in all the other qualities necessary to 

 constitute a first-rate animal. 



It is not only an inference, and nothing more ; but it is an 

 nference resting on nothing, and contrary to all analogy. 



It will not be denied, that in the United States four-mile- 

 VoL. I.— 24 



