112 THK HORSK. 



Than which, it is needless to say, no possible idea can be 

 more erroneous ; since it is especially in the texture of his 

 sinews and muscles, and in the character and conformation of 

 his bones, that the thoroughbred horse of Arab descent is so 

 immeasurably superior to every other horse in the known world. 



Kow, so far from it being, as Mr. Linsley surmises, the case 

 that, in our days, the form of Justin Morgan would not be 

 thought best calculated to give the greatest speed at short dis- 

 tances — the form described as his, and no other form^ is judged 

 the best for short distances, and the shorter the better, and for 

 no other distances than short ones. 



Every one, who knows the hrst rudiments of racing, or of 

 the motions of a horse, knows that a short, close-coupled, quick- 

 gathering animal jumps at once into his stroke, and at his third 

 or Iburth stride is going at the top of his pace, w^hich he can 

 never much outdo ; and that, consequently, he is at the end of 

 his eighty rods — less than a quarter of a mile — before the large, 

 long-striding racer has well got under way. 



On this principle, I perfectly remember, when I was a 

 young school-boy, that it was my especial delight to get gentle- 

 men, visiting at my father's house, to match their three-part- 

 bred hunters against a little rat of a Shetland pony, which I 

 rode, for a single dash around the carriage sweep, before the 

 hall-door, a distance of something better than a hundred yards 

 in a circular form, in w^hich I invariably came off the winner. 



And on this principle, again, it is well ascertained that, for 

 a straight fifty yards, any man who has got the use of his legs, 

 and for a straight hundred any good runner, can beat a race- 

 horse nine times out of ten, both starting from a stand-still. 



Nor is this all. For not only is it well known and admitted 

 that small, short-stepping, quick-gathering horses are always, 

 cdBteris paribus, superior at short distances, or in round circles 

 of small diameter, to large, rating gallopers, which would run 

 clean away from them at long distances over a straight level ; 

 but it is equally conceded, that, for such distances, in a single 

 dash, a thoroughbred horse has no advantage w^hatsoever, from 

 being thoroughbred, over a half, or two-thirds, or one-fourth bred 

 • — nay ! over a horse which has no blood at all in his veins, if 



