RIDING RECOLLECTIONS 



perhaps pushing his horse home. Till within a 

 few years, there was literally no cart-horse blood 

 in Ireland. The " black-drop " of the ponderous 

 Clydesdale remained positively unknown, and 

 although the Suffolk Punch has been recently 

 introduced, he cannot yet have sufficiently tainted 

 the pedigrees of the country, to render us 

 mistrustful of a golden-coated chestnut, with a 

 round barrel and a strong back. 



No, their horses, if not quite " clean-bred," as 

 the Irish themselves call it, are at least of illus- 

 trious parentage on both sides a few generations 

 back, and this high descent cannot but avail them 

 when called on for long - continued exertion, 

 particularly at the end of the day. 



Juvenal, hurling his scathing satire against the 

 patricians of his time, drew from the equine race 

 a metaphor to illustrate the superiority of merit 

 over birth. However unanswerable in argument, 

 he was, I. think, wrong in his facts. Men and 

 women are to be found of every parentage, good, 

 bad, and indifferent ; but with horses, there is 

 more in race than in culture, and for the selection 

 of these noble animals at least, I can imagine no 

 safer guide than the aristocratic maxim, " Blood 

 will tell ! " 



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