ON THE NATIONAL UTILITY OF HUNTING. 19 



the turf as the means of supplying us with the class of horse 

 calculated to get useful horses generally. Years ago, a sire would 

 have had poor chance as a country stallion, who could not 

 boast of gold cups and king's plates, carried off, as a rule, 

 under high weights and often at four-mile heats. Men then 

 endeavoured to breed a horse with sound legs and feet to 

 stand the wear and tear of such work, and a constitution hardy 

 enough to undergo the preparation necessary. Now the racing- 

 man wants a very different animal ; instead of developing bone 

 and sinew until the time Nature intended he should do, he must 

 be as big as a two-year-old as his ancestor was at four, and able 

 to go at extraordinary speed for half a mile or five furlongs, so 

 as to pay his ivay as a two-year-old. If he trains on, so much 

 the better, but to win two-year-old races he is bred, and to that 

 quality buyers, as a rule, look when assembled round the sale- 

 ring. Speed is everything, soundness is little thought of if the 

 trainer thinks he can get him through one season's preparation, 

 and stoutness is looked on certainly as a boon, if a horse having 

 the luck not to be knocked all to pieces in his early days should 

 chance to possess it, but I fear very few breeders now take it 

 into consideration when mating their mares. The result is, the 

 stamp of horse that made us famous all over the world for 

 hunters is now scarcely to be found; like the Dodo he has 

 vanished, and the wiry and enduring half-bred stock he got has 

 gone with him. It is no use to tell racing men this. Ask them 

 for bread, and they give you a stone ; talk of stamina and 

 cleverness, and they tell you the horse has increased so much in 

 height on an average in a certain number of years, whereby I 

 conclude that he is so much the more difficult to mount and 

 less useful when you have mounted him ; for of the horse, as 

 the hound, it may be said height does not constitute size. In 

 fact ask them for a true-shaped horse, and they too often point 

 to a long-legged, weak-jointed, shelly- weed, with neither feet or 

 legs fit to carry his own body, if the flesh had not been boiled 

 off him,, and a predetermination to roaring, and all kinds of un- 



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