38 THE RACE-HORSE. 



thirdly, give him as little green meat as possible, 

 and as much corn as he will eat.'"" The trainer we 

 allude to has now retired, but he had all the young 

 stock of the Duke of Grafton, and many of the 

 first and most successful sportsmen in England, 

 through his hands, and the annual disbursements 

 of his establishment exceeded ten thousand pounds. 

 That dry, and " hard food," as it is called, is the 

 natural food of the parent stock from which our 

 race-horses are descended, is beyond all doubt ; and 

 that the firmness of their acting parts is attributable 

 to that, and to the warmth and dryness of the cli- 

 mate, is also admitted. Is it, then, to be wondered 

 at, that breeders of horses, and not only of race- 

 horses, have at length found out that dry food and 

 warmth have the same effect in the Temperate as 

 they have had, and now have, in the Torrid Zone ? 

 that they have discovered that, when colts are bred 

 on rich succulent food, and subject to a humid at- 

 mosphere, the bulk of the body increases out of 

 proportion to the strength of the bones ; and to 

 these predisposing causes are also to be attributed 

 most of the false points which we find in horses, 

 such as fleshy shoulders, deficiency of muscle, weak 

 pasterns, and flat feet? Virgil discovered this 

 nearly two thousand years ago, and, when speaking 

 in praise of Epirus, as suitable to the breeding of 

 horses, emphatically observes : — 



" Continuo has leges aetemaque fcedera certis, 



Imposuit natura locis.^' Georg. \, 1. 60. 



So careful, however, now are some of our princi- 

 pal and most successful breeders of race-horses to 



