40 THE HORSE 



advancing or otherwise, yet the scale of weight has con- 

 tinually been lowered between three-year-olds and older 

 horses, showing they have not participated in the 

 improvement claimed for the younger animals. He 

 mentions further : — 



" From these weight differences it can be seen that 

 the abilities of four, five, and six-year-olds changed very 

 little up to 1850. An improvement of horses, on the 

 other hand, after six years old gradually ceases 

 altogether. . . . Therefrom it follows that the present four 

 and five-year-old race-horses are each 3| lbs. worse than 

 those in the middle of the last century. ... In breeding, 

 where only two-year-olds improve, one can hardly speak 

 of a general progress. . . . Taken altogether, these 

 observations justify us in assuming that, considered from 

 the standpoint of the altered weight differences, the 

 improvement of race-horses took place up to about the 

 middle of the nineteenth century, and also specially that 

 a favourable development of four-year-old and older 

 horses up to the sixth year existed. Furthermore, that 

 simultaneously with the frequent occurrence of races for 

 two-year-olds partly in the beginning of the year, and 

 with the existence of the many short handicaps, a retro- 

 gression of the development of race-horses after their 

 third year began soon after the second half of the 

 nineteenth century. The time in which the number of 

 two-year-old race-horses began to exceed the number of 

 three-year-olds denotes the turning-point." 



This statement is quite in accord with the apt remark, so 

 frequently made, that modern race-horses are nearly always 

 at the summit of their powers in the autumn of their three- 

 year-old season. 



But the Baron has other serious statements to make 

 on the evil influence of early racing, to which he ascribes 

 the increasing lack of fertility among thoroughbred mares, 

 which he proves by taking the statistics from 1851 to the 

 year 1908 :— 



" On the basis of physiological observations and practical 

 experience, we must assume that the present over-exertion, 



