12 THE RACE-HORSE. 



be a certain elegance of parts, derived from air, 

 climate, and food, which, being suitable to the true 

 natural conformation of the animal, enables him to 

 perform extraordinary feats of activity and motion, 

 coupled with great endurance of the highest bodily 

 exertion ; and hence the expression, " he shows a 

 vast deal of blood,*' means nothing more than that 

 he is a truly formed race-horse. Where, he asks, 

 is the blood of the Ostrich, whose speed is so great, 

 that it can " laugh at the horse and his rider?'' 

 " If the good qualities of the race -horse," says he, 

 " depend upon blood, we could not, as we often do, 

 see one horse very good, and his own brother, with 

 equal advantages of good keep and training, very 

 bad." It was the opinion of this writer, that it 

 has been to the folly of expecting, that what is 

 termed high-blood, in the Eastern horses, unaccom- 

 panied Avith essential form, will produce a racer, so 

 many failures in the attempt to breed race-horses 

 have occurred ; that the virtue of what racing men 

 call " blood," has been too much insisted upon, not 

 being sufficiently influenced by the fact, that it can 

 never be considered as independent of form and 

 matter. We conceive there is a great deal of truth 

 in each of the foregoing observations. Blood can- 

 not be considered independently of form and mat- 

 ter, inasmuch as the excellence of all horses must 

 depend on the mechanism of their frames, which, if 

 duly proportioned, and accompanied with superior 

 internal, as well as external organisation, gives 

 them stride, pace, and endurance. The quickness 

 of repeating this stride also, and the power of con- 



