292 ANNALS OE THE TURF. 



would further have horse racing abolished, and the horses applied 

 generally as stallions. But the use which these sort of reasoners 

 would propose to derive from the racing breed, would soon destroy 

 itself. They do not consider that in racing the necessity for thor- 

 ough blood, is obvious and imperative, and such is a sure ground 

 of its preservation. Were the sports of the turf to be abandoned, 

 that unerring test, by which to ascertain the purity of the blood, 

 and the other requisite qualities of the race horse, would be lost, 

 and consequently, that glorious and matchless species, the thorough 

 bred courser, would in no great length of time, become extinct 

 among us — and with him all his noble and valuable properties, and 

 his place be supplied by a gross, ill-shaped, or spider legged mongrel, 

 which would insure the degeneration of the whole race. I would 

 ask, is not a cross of the blood horse upon the common stock in- 

 dispensable to insure us light footed and quick fnoving saddle hor- 

 ses ? Where do we go for the parade or cavalry horse if it is not 

 the blooded stock, or to those highly imbued with that blood ? Did 

 not the speed and wind of the cavalry horses of Colonels Lee and 

 Washington, during the revolutionary war, give those commanders 

 a decided superiority over the enemy in the kind of warfare they 

 waged, where celerity of movement was all important ? and were 

 not those horses procured in Maryland and Virginia, and partook 

 of the best racing blood of those states? The value of the blood, or 

 southern horse, from their ability to carry high -weights, was strongly 

 exemplified in the wars of the ancients ; as they rode to war in 

 heavy armour, and always selected and preferred for this purpose 

 their highest bred horses, which were also frequently covered, like 

 their riders, in heavy armour. In former times in England, their 

 hunters were only half bred horses, but later observations and expe- 

 rience have fully convinced them that only those that are thorough 

 bred (notwithstanding the popular clamour of their deficiency in 

 bone) are adequate in speed, strength, and durability, to long and 

 severe chases with fleet hounds, particularly over a deep country, 

 and that they will always break down any horses of an opposite 

 description that may be brought into the field. 



The value of the racing blood when crossed upon the common 

 cart breed is also apparent in making them superior in the plough 

 and wagon, provided they have the requisite size, arising from 

 quicker action and a better wind particularly in the long hot days 

 of summer. There is the same difference of motion between the 

 racer and the common bred horse as between a coach and a cart. 

 It is moreover a fact, although not generally knovv^n, that no other 

 horses are capable of carrying with expedition such heavy weights ; 

 and were "a thirty stone plate (420 lbs.) to be given, and the dis- 

 tance made fifty miles, it would be everlastingly won by the thor- 

 ough bred horse. There is only one way in which a bred horse would 

 be beat at high weights ; it would be (to' use a queer phrase,) to 

 make it a stand still race ; in that case, I would back a cart horse ; 

 I think he would beat a racer by hours." 



The strength of the race horse, and his ability to carry high 

 weights, arise from the solidity of his bones, the close texture of his 

 fibres, the bulk and substance of his tendons, and from his whole 



