62 THE HUNTING-FIELD. 



in a state to work without pain to himself, the 

 only way to enable him to do so is to keep him 

 going. If a young horse should be stiff the day 

 after hunting, in him all the vital functions are in 

 such full play that rest will restore his limbs to 

 their wonted elasticity ; not so with the old one : 

 his flagging energies must be quickened by motion, 

 or swelled legs, general stiffness, and consequent 

 disinclination to motion from the pain it creates, 

 is the certain consequence. 



In corroboration of what I state, I will refer to 

 machineers, or, in other words, stage-coach horses. 

 Many a team of these, composed of four highly 

 bred old cripples, would gallop over their five or 

 six miles of ground at the rate of fourteen miles 

 an hour, and return the same stage in the evening, 

 without, figuratively speaking, turning a hair, or 

 requiring a touch of the whip, and would do such 

 work better by far than young ones: and why 

 they would do so arose from the following causes ; 

 being old cripples, as they wxre, they could be 

 got, in stable phrase, " of a pretty good family ; '' 

 that is, so very highly bred that had they been 

 young or at all sound they could not have been 

 purchased at coach price, and if under bred, they 

 could not have stood the pace. Such highly bred 

 horses had years of hard keep in them ; the work 

 they had all their lives been at had kept them 



