316 THE WORK JUSTIFIED. 
breaking of the colt and his following preparation, his 
subsequent performances in trials and in public, are subjects 
demanding the ample treatment which has been given to 
them; and the method followed will hardly be charged with 
redundancy, which, at the worst, would be less censurable 
than incompleteness. The chapters on betting, on the scandals 
of the race-course, and the present one on attacks on the turf, 
are open possibly to the charge of being the least cognate to 
the subject. As such they are, I am free to confess, the least 
satisfactory to myself; but, on the other hand, they are not 
absolutely foreign to our examination, and, indeed, it is hoped 
may in some fashion serve to round it off. I may add that 
the suggestions for reform which fill Chapter XXVL., as well 
as the earlier comments on the light-weight jockeys, have, I 
am fully convinced, every warrant for their amplification in 
any work on the racehorse. If any one doubt that the conduct 
of the young jockeys is an evil loudly crying for redress, let 
him attend the room next the weighing-room after one of 
the large handicaps, and he will find that if their faults 
have not here been extenuated, at least nought has been set 
down in malice. : 
If nothing more is required to be said specially on other 
points, I may yet venture to submit that the whole, as an 
original work, has had to contend with many difficulties in the 
endeavour to eliminate golden truths from popular errors, and 
to avoid plagiarism. 
It has been my studied object throughout not to weary the 
reader by giving a detailed account where it was unnecessary, 
or punctiliously to define matters and things when the bare, 
name was sufficient. For instance, when physic is recom- 
mended, I merely mention it. I have not said what it should 
be composed of, or the quantity sufficient for the dose, or the 
