606 THE HORSE. 



and bone to the older horses of the turf, has been called into 

 existence. Now, as this is the race employed to communi- 

 cate its peculiar properties to the others, it is manifest that 

 a deterioration of its properties, from whatever cause, is 

 calculated to exercise an injurious influence on all the indi- 

 viduals with which it is mingled in blood. But yet more 

 injurious than the rearing of a race of swift but feeble 

 horses, is the constitutional injury inflicted upon the indivi- 

 duals of the race by that system of early forcing, with re- 

 spect to food and discipline, to which they must be subjected 

 at the earliest possible period of life. Hence the mortality 

 amongst these animals, the strains, the founders, the hernise, 

 and other accidents consequent on over-tension of the parts, 

 and all the functional maladies in the respiratory and other 

 organs, which a premature and unnatural exertion generates 

 in the system, and which, not confined to the individuals, 

 descend to the offspring. The evil resulting from these 

 causes to the other breeds of the country, is in proportion to 

 the just estimation in which this noble race of horses has 

 been hitherto held, and the increasing desire to communicate 

 its properties to the inferior races. The remedy might be 

 found in determination, rigidly carried into effect, by the in- 

 fluential supporters of the turf, to root out the more flagrant 

 corruptions which fashion and cupidity have introduced, espe- 

 cially with respect to the age at which horses shall be per- 

 mitted to run ; or, should the influence of individuals be in- 

 sufficient to effect the necessary reformation, then legislative 

 measures should be called for to correct abuses which are no- 

 wise essential to the legitimate purposes of the turf, and 

 which deprive the country of the benefit which it is entitled 

 to derive from a race of horses, brought to a high degree of 

 perfection, not by the modern gamblers of the turf, but by 

 the care of former generations. 



Another cause of the deterioration of the horses of the 

 country is to be ascribed to errors in breeding, arising chiefly 

 from injudicious and extreme mixtures of blood, and in atten- 



