GENERAL IMPROVEMENT. 46 



cart-horse, or some fancy family of no general application or 

 utility, such as the Naragansett pacer, or the Scottish Galloway. 

 "What has occurred is this — all the types of animals, even with 

 all the improvements which have been made in them, have 

 fallen down three or four stages ; and if the much bemoaned 

 good old English squires could arise from their lowly beds 



" At breezy call of incense-breathing morn," 



and resuscitate with them Towler and Jowler, and all tlieir deep- 

 mouthed, crook-kneed packs, with which to badger a fox to 

 death in a run of eight mortal hours, they would find infinitely 

 superior hunters to any they had ever backed during tlieir lives, 

 going indeed not as hunters, but drawdng the slowest second- 

 class gentlemen's carriages in the country, and the very best 

 beasts of their own precise class, in the better style of vans and 

 omnibuses, in the towns and cities. 



There are hundreds of horses to-day in New Yo)-k carmen's 

 trucks, superior in blood, form, and poweis of every kind, to the 

 best hunter that went in England in the reign of the first or 

 second George ; and the best road-hackneys of the same date 

 were not comparable to the smaller and lighter cart-horses of 

 the present day, such as go in the baker's or the butcher's wag- 

 on. So much for the croaking of the praisers of the age that 

 has just departed ! 



Li all branches of equestrianism, speed has been for years 

 the end aimed at, in connection with the ability to carry weight 

 and to endure continued exertion. Mere weight and the ability 

 of dragging enormous loads at a foot's pace, have ceased to be 

 qualities desired or desirable, in the horse ; while quickness is, 

 and ever will continue, so long as time shall have its value, the 

 valuable consideration. 



Whether the present modes of racing, either in this country 

 or in England, are the best devised to preserve the breed of 

 race-horses at their utmost perfection, is another question, and 

 is open to much doubt — doubt fully as great on this, as on the 

 other side of the water — the absurdly light weights adopted in 

 America, being in my opinion fully as detrimental, in encouraging 

 the maintenance of a wrong type of thoroughbred, as are the 

 short distances now run in England. 



