ON THE NATIONAL UTILITY OF HUNTING. 25 



well as any horse you can find, and better than most. In 

 carriage work, as a trooper, harnessed to a van, or even at 

 plough or harrow, he can take his part and do his share of 

 labour ; and in encouraging the production of this class, even if 

 it did no other good, I claim for the chase a sphere of great 

 national utility. What colonel of a regiment would not jump 

 to have his men mounted on weight-carrying hunters, if he could 

 get them 1 It was in breeding hunters that our troopers, hacks, 

 harness and van horses, were produced a few years ago. People 

 did not breed with the idea of producing them, but hoped for a 

 first-class hunter ; those that fell short of the mark were put to 

 meaner trades. True, in Yorkshire, carriage horses were and still 

 are bred, without reference to the saddle ; but, take England 

 generally, and a hunter was the mark aimed at. I am sorry to 

 say I must speak of it in a great measute in the past tense, for 

 the foreigners have snapped up the mares, as well as the sires, 

 wherever they could be found, though many a man was induced 

 to part with his mares as much from the difficulty of finding a 

 suitable mate as by the thirst of gold. The consequence is that 

 really first-class weight-carriers are much more scarce now than 

 they were a few years ago. 



I will quote the opinion of one of the finest riders and best 

 sportsmen in England on this subject, as it conveys my meaning 

 much more ably than anything I could write myself : — 



" We have now established half-mile races for our two-year- 

 olds, as, with some few exceptions, the most important events 

 of our English turf — our very Derbys and St. Legers — are but a 

 scramble of a dozen furlongs, with little more than the weight 

 of a child on a veri/ young horse's back. With all the forcing 

 by which art strives to expel nature, it returns in this instance, 

 as Horace says, literally * with a stable fork.'^ We cannot get 

 an animal to its prime at three years old who ought not to arrive 

 at maturity till twice that age. Still, we continue to breed 



1 " Xaturam expellas /wrcd, tamen usque rccurret.'* 



