I02 The English Horse. 



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I am not one of those always lamenting over our horse's 

 degeneracy, although I may be quite willing to accept 

 the convictions which those who can look further back 

 are compelled to admit ; but I maintain our horse is not 

 so good as he might be if we had pursued a different 

 and more careful style of breeding. Those who argue 

 that the horse has not deteriorated point to certain 

 stallions of a large size, and, although they as a rule 

 ignore the time test, yet they refer you to the time in 

 which certain great races have been run, as being faster 

 during the last few years than a short period before. 

 This latter — if a correct test — could only show that 

 there had been an improvement in the last thirty years 

 or half-century. But even this is a delusion ; for I have 

 it on very good authority that hardly any races for 

 several years past have been truly timed, the horses 

 having started seconds before the time-keepers begin to 

 take time. 



Time, if properly taken, and races be truly run, must 

 be a tolerably correct test, and be valuable as a guide 

 to those who come after us ; but if time be not taken, 

 fifty years hence people will imagine that we had 

 stayers, from the fact that there were some races of two 

 and three miles, and, having no time to guide them, will 

 presume they were run from end to end. 



Does experience teach us that ' those fine-sized, big- 

 boned thorough-breds,' which are sometimes seen, and 

 brought forward as an emphatic proof that there is no 

 necessity, at any rate, for the breed of horses to deterio- 

 rate, are as a rule the stoutest, the truest, and most 



