44 THK HORSE. 



teamster would now put into his cart-shafts, the pace of even a 

 very slow race-horse would naturally seem so enormous, that 

 one easily ceases to wonder at the spectators believing that 

 Flying Cliilders ran his mile in a minute — the rather, that there 

 were no means then in existence by which speed of that kind 

 could be tested ; and that a mile in a minute was a purely ideal 

 rate, which could be compared to nothing, and reduced to no 

 standard ; since there existed nothing on earth capable of being 

 tried, or, known to men, which had ever gone, or was capable 

 of going at that speed, unless it were a bird in the air, or a fish 

 in the sea. 



How any sane man can persist in inquiring wliether this or 

 that horse ever ran a mile in a minute — as we see by the queries 

 in sporting newspapers, that iifty, at the least, are inquiring 

 every year — when he has surely seen a railroad engine going at 

 something far under that rate, yet far above the powers of any 

 horse to rival it, one would find difficulty in comprehending ; 

 if it were not evident that the credence which men give to 

 things, nowadays, is in the inverse ratio to their intrinsic 

 credibility ; and that, in a word, if any thing be disbelieved, at 

 present, it is not because it is absurdly incredible, but because 

 it is not sufficiently absurd or incredible to command credence. 



Be this as it may, there is no evidence, or shadow of evi- 

 dence, that the early English race-horse was superior, in any 

 point of speed, endurance, or capacity of labor,, to the American 

 or English horse of to-day. 



If there are, now, more rarely wonders that outdo all con- 

 temporaries, it is that the general standard of excellence is so 

 much higher, that to surpass it extraordinarily is infinitely more 

 difficult." 



In every other class of horse, except the thoroughbred — the 

 hunter, the roadster, the trotter, the carriage-horse, the trooper, 

 even the team-horse — the improvement is not smaller, in the last 

 century, than that in machinery, and scientific applications, 

 during the same lapse of time. 



"Nor is it altogether true, that any class or type of animal 

 has wholly disappeared or become extinct in England ; or, for 

 that matter, in America, either, so far as it ever had any exist- 

 ence on that continent, unless it be the very coarsest type of 



