BREEDING. 11 



bright intelligent head, good shoulders and forehand, 

 with a depth of girth, an evenly, balanced frame, — 

 and .a well-shaped and sound set of legs and feet? 

 These characteristics, as a rule, are the beau-ideal 

 of a youngster, esijecially when in type he is repre- 

 sentative of the strain of blood to which he is ac- 

 credited. Does this go far enough? In my experi- 

 ence it does not, for the simple reason that there 

 are wanting the two chief elements in point of 

 structure that constitute a perfect specimen, in the 

 sense of what is required in a race-horse. These 

 are strength and general development of the spinal 

 structure. In the second place depth of hock, with 

 the hind-quarters somewhat obliquely, rather than 

 perpendicularly, set on, permitting the greatest pos- 

 sible under-reach and hind-quarter propulsion from 

 behind. To avoid repetition as to the necessity and 

 value of this, I refer my readers to the chapter on 

 jockeys (pp. 49-52). However, I take the opportu- 

 nity of saying there has been no horse having gained 

 celebrity on the turf, since racing became an estab- 

 lished institution in this country down to the pres- 

 ent, that did not owe its success to the possession of 

 abnormal powers in these two mentioned particu- 

 lars. 



The "spinal structure," which is the mainspring 

 in the mechanism of the race-horse, is by no means 



