SPEED. 61 



heaviest weight across a country, and the last men- 

 tioned horse was the sire of several very powerful, 

 at the same time very brilliant hunters. But as it 

 is action after all that carries weight, the thorough- 

 bred horses of this day are not deficient in that 

 respect, unless undersized ; and there are more 

 thorough-bred hunters at this period, and have 

 been more for the last thirty years, than were ever 

 known before. This improvement in action also 

 qualifies the full-bred horse for the road, whereas 

 formerly not one in a hundred was fit to ride off 

 turf. Indeed daisy-cutters and thorough-bred horses 

 were nearly synonymous terms ; but at present a 

 young lady on a bit of blood is an every day sight ; 

 and a young gentleman on any thing else in the 

 parks, or on his road to hounds, is become rather 

 a rare one. This is a very saving clause to breeders 

 of race-horses, as a market is now generally found 

 for such as are undersized, or tried to be deficient 

 in speed for racing ; whereas in former days, a bad 

 race-horse was, like Rosinante, neither saleable nor 

 pawnable. 



Speed. — All animals in a state of domestication 

 exhibit powers far beyond those that are natural 

 to them in their wild state, and writers on the 

 horse have advanced to the utmost verge of possi- 

 bility, in recording the maximum speed of the 

 English race-horse. Most of the instances stated 

 by them, such as Flying Childers having run a 

 mile in a minute, are unsupported by authority, 

 and therefore not worthy of regard. That the 



