SADDLE HORSES. 161 
of its sire and the strength of its dam; but more often 
animals thus bred are leggy, slab-sided, and nerveless. 
The same result is likely to follow when two horses 
of about equal breeding, but of very antagonistic 
qualities, are mated. General Knox and Lady Thorne 
were nearly, if not quite, the best trotting horse and 
mare of their day. Lady Thorne was out of a thor- 
oughbred mare by a horse bred in the same way. 
The dam of General Knox was also by a thoroughbred. 
But General Knox was a coarse, stout-limbed, rather 
heavy-headed horse, whereas Lady Thorne had the 
quality of a thoroughbred, and, as might have been 
expected, their foal, General Washington, proved to 
be a rangy, weedy beast, far inferior to his sire and 
dam. However, some of General Washington’s colts 
are very fine animals, the inherited excellence which 
was latent in him having appeared, as often happens 
in similar cases, in the second generation. 
When it comes to racing, or steeple-chasing, and 
even to fox-hunting in the fast counties of England, 
something different is required. Of late years the 
best steeple-chasers have commonly been thorough- 
bred; and it is said that no horse with the slightest 
taint of cold blood in his pedigree can now live in 
“the first flight” of the Quorn hunt. 
It is a fact of some interest, that during the past 
forty years or so both fox-hunting and prize-fighting 
have undergone a similar change, in each case a long, 
slow process having been replaced by a short, quick 
one. The newly invented “hurricane rushes” cor- 
respond to the tremendous bursts of speed with which 
the Leicestershire riders now chase the fox; and the 
loser’s fate in a modern prize-fight is commonly de- 
