HOBSE BREEDING* 147 



intelligent-looking heads, well set on. If both the sire and 

 dam be thorough-bred, so much the better ; but thorough- 

 bred horses with substance are becoming scarcer every 

 year ; indeed, how can they be otherwise, when foals and 

 yearlings are forced like a hot-house gardener forces his 

 grapes and pine-apples ? His owner may get the size 

 and outward semblance, but none of the substance or 

 quality of the fruit when grown in a natural state, and 

 allowed its own time to ripen. 



There was a time when children were worked (in the 

 cotton factories of Manchester and its districts) until it 

 was a rarity to see one grown to maturity in the same 

 form that God made him the result was the notorious 

 transmission of their infirmities to their progeny. Then 

 it was that the legislature interfered, and effectually pre- 

 vented factory owners from working children until 

 they were qualified to stand the fatigue without the risk 

 of deformity. I am no advocate for government inter- 

 ference with private enterprise, but I think the time 

 will come when it will be forced, in self-defence, to in- 

 terfere more seriously in the matter of horse breeding 

 than it has hitherto done. We have too much of the 

 present quality of racing blood running through the 

 veins of our troopers, which renders them constitution- 

 ally weak, and unfit to stand the rigour of a winter at the 

 picket post, especially when existing upon the uncer- 

 tain supply of forage, which is incidental to all armies 

 on a campaign in a strange and perhaps hostile country. 



The infusion of the racing blood of the present day 



