48 CHEAP HORSES SOLD FOR LONG PRICES 



Started by our model breeding establishments. Such 

 lectures might be given every second or third year 

 during the spring and summer, when the farmers 

 would be more at liberty to attend them. 



I have from childhood passed my life amongst 

 horses, and have ever taken the very greatest interest 

 in them; and the knowledge which I have thus acquired 

 has enabled me to pick up, for a, comparatively speaking, 

 mere song, many a horse which has turned out to be 

 worth hundreds of pounds. 



I have also on several occasions exhibited horses at 

 shows whose shape and performance were perfection, 

 and which also subsequently sold for long prices, but 

 which, nevertheless, were passed over by the judges in 

 favour of some inferior thoroughbred, without a single 

 recommendation save that of breeding. 



Now, such judges did a very great deal of harm, for 

 they were apparently ignorant of the points of any but 

 harness horses or racing weeds. 



One horse in particular, a horse to which 1 have 

 before referred, by Cregan, as being about the very 

 best I ever owned, was so passed over at one of the 

 Dublin horse-shows, and the award given to an 

 inferior leggy animal, which was so deficient in the 

 necessary propelling power that he dropped his hind- 

 legs at every fence — a horse for ever coming to grief 

 in the hunting-field, as I well knew. Nor could any- 

 thing else have been reasonably expected, when the 

 position of his hind-legs was taken into consideration ; 

 whereas my own horse was never known to make a 

 mistake, and was as perfect a hunter as a horse could 

 be, and was both clever and fast. I refused 500 

 guineas for him, which offer was made me by none 



