62 A HUNTING STABLE. 



their veins of good blood and strain of noble ancestry, 

 and these had, for the most part, the old, short-square 

 cut docks of the olden school 



Man;^ more were tall, muscular, long-reached thor- 

 ough-breds, with splendid crests and long bang tails, 

 the hair trimmed squarely off at the termination of the 

 dock — horses, looking in all respects like racers — 

 horses, which in all probability would have made 

 the best four mile horses in all England, but for 

 the evil practice, which is, I believe, beginning to act 

 seriously in the deterioration of the breed of English 

 race horses ; I mean the practice of commencing the 

 racing career of all colts and fillies when they are 

 merely in the gristle, and not half come to the bone, 

 at the infantine age of two and three years, during 

 which all the great prizes are run for. This practice 

 not only tending to break down and destroy, by the 

 tremendous system of training thus rendered neces- 

 sary, two-thirds of the produce of each year, but ma- 

 terially injuring even those that have powers to go 

 through the training, come out from the fiery ordeal 

 sound, and distinguish themselves as victors ; and yet 

 more than all this by incapacitating one-third of the 

 year's stock from going into the training stables at all, 

 as too big, too leggy, too bony, and too roomy, to be 

 brought by any possible process of forcing or condi- 

 tioning into sufficient flesh, form and muscle to give 

 them even a remote chance of winning as three year olds. 



Could these very horses be left untrained and un- 

 molested until five or six years, they would then I be- 

 lieve prove to be the best horses ever raised in Eng- 

 land, and we should have far fewer rickety, deformed, 

 light-boned and puny colts and fillies in five years, 

 than are now produced annually to disgrace our turf 

 and discredit our breeding. 



Unfortunately the present system of three year old 

 racing, all the great stakes, as the Kiddlesworth, the 



