22 



conveniently carry, hesitated whether it was worth their while to go and 

 listen to. 



I have now but a few words to add on the supply of the English 

 breed of horses for cavalry purposes. The English horse, like the English- 

 man himself, is a thorough mongrel, and as the horse has, beyond all 

 question, improved by crossing, we may safely conclude that the being 

 has suffered no detriment by it that has produced a Shakespear and a 

 Milton, a Chatham and a Burke, a Watt and a Stephenson, a Marlborough 

 and a Wellington, a Blake and a Nelson, and which will assuredly 

 produce their equals whenever their country shall have need of their 

 service. 



We, who formerly imported all our best horses, are now the only 

 people who export good ones, and we supply all nations that have 

 sense and ability to buy. I have looked at our export of horses for the 

 last year, for which the public accounts are made up, and find the number 

 exported to have been 1,574, and their custom-house value to have been 

 117,422Z. France had out of these 755, and Belgium and Germany 611. 

 I suspect that the officers of Her Majesty's Customs are not good 

 judges of horse-flesh, for the valuation of those furnished to 

 France was short of 50,000Z„ or at the average of 661. a head, which is 

 much too low a valuation, for I have every reason to believe that one of 

 the horses exported was " The Flying Dutchman " (of whom it never 

 could be said that, like his namesake, "he was nowhere"), which was 

 sold to the French for the sum of 5,0001. It is certain that we have 

 turned the tables on the French since the time of Charles II, when a 

 Frenchman was the master of His Majesty's riding-school, and pro- 

 nounced by old Evelyn to be the first judge of a horse in Europe. 



Wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has settled, the improved English 

 horse has been introduced, and, wherever climate and pasture have been 

 favourable, with success. India, which has most need of the cavalry 

 horse, is not one in which the introduction of the English horse has been 

 most successful. A great and expensive stud has existed in Bengal for 

 sixty years, without ever having been equal to furnish even a sufficient 

 supply for the European cavalry of that government. The stud of Madras, 

 situated on the table-land of Mysore, is upon a far more rational and 

 economical scale than that of Bengal, consisting only of Arab sires. 

 The grasses of India are neither abundant nor nutritious; the plain 

 proof of which is that the flesh of no mere grass-fed animal is fit for 

 the table, that of the stall-fed animals alone being so. But even were 

 the conditions more favourable for breeding than they are in India, studs 



