BREEDING ARMY HORSES. 57 



employed than had ever been collected in 

 England before, afforded an admirable ojjpor- 

 tunity for one interested in the matter to 

 judge for himself. Some 50,000 troops of 

 all arms were encamped in my immediate 

 neighbourhood, and it was the unanimous 

 opinion of such of the country residents 

 (many of them fair judges on such points) 

 as remembered the autumn manoeuvres 

 held in this same district in 1872, that 

 the physique of both men and horses had 

 greatly deteriorated from that of those 

 employed on the previous occasion. Being 

 able to remember something of the ma- 

 ncEuvres held on Dartmoor in 1873, I was 

 disposed to agree. Without committing 

 myself to the opinion of a buxom house- 

 wife, who, standing with her arms akimbo, 

 as company after company of Her Majesty's 

 Militia and Infantry of the Line filed past 

 her cottage gate, exclaimed, " What a lot 

 of dirty little boys ! " — their dirtiness at 



