THE AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



820 



mutiny at Cawnpore. Others I remember 

 well. A few days after my landing at 

 Cape Town (in 1853), I went with a friend 

 to see a pair of beautiful little l)laok Arabs. 

 They Avere a fine match for the carriage. 

 One was suffering from inflammation in 

 the head ; he had to be trepanned ; this 

 operation was successful, and the noble 

 animal recovered his pristine beauty of 

 head and his brightness. Not least was a 

 pair, behind which I often drove with 

 their owner, who on one occasion for a 

 wager, undertook to drive tnem from Cape 

 Town to the Paarl — a distance of at least 

 sixty miles — without a rest, to turn them 

 round there, and bring them back, also 

 without stopping except for Nature's 

 purposes, without " turning a hair,"' in a 

 given time. He won his wager. 



FARMER HORSE-BREEDERS. 



The Heatlies, their relations, the De 

 Vos family, the Bredas, Van der Byls, and 

 Chiappinis, the Hon. Mr. Reitz, Jan 

 Linde,and Charles Manuel, Charles Berry, 

 Martinus Melck and the Cloetes J. B. 

 Bailey, the Jackson and Hose families (of 

 Beaufort West), Jack Thomas, the late 

 Mr. Thomas Heatlie, the Kotzes and J. B. 

 Munnik, Mr. Theunissen, Mr. Meteler- 

 kamp, and very many more, whose names 

 I greatly regret having forgotten, did a 

 vast deal to maintain the excellence of 

 the breed of Cape horses by every means 

 in their power. 



In about 185G-8 a scourge appeared 

 amongst the horses in Natal. Anthrax 

 swept them away like chaff before the 

 wind. It travelled along the littoral 

 southward, and besides destroying 70,000 

 horses in the Cape Colony, it so com- 

 pletely sterilised some notable breeding 

 areas, such as those along the Breede 

 River, as to make them useless to this 

 date. Among the permanent sufferers by 

 that calamity was the father of State 

 Secretary Reitz. 



The exportation of horses to India and 

 Mauritius became a nullity— the trade has 

 long since ceased to exist. While it lasted 

 I have seen beauties born and trained as 

 cavalry remounts for officers ranging 

 from £25 to £160 each. And my thoughts 

 go sadly back to one horse, bought by a 

 friend, and partly trained in the grounds 

 about my residence, which was taken to 

 India, and was one of the first victims of 

 the Mutiny, being ridden by the adjutant 



and captain of the Jhansi Irregular 

 Cavalry, who fell on that terrible occasion* 



With the death of Mr. J. B. Bailey— an 

 ex- Civil Servant of the Honourable East 

 India Company — at Wynberg, the old 

 sporting life of the Cape may be said to 

 have begun to see its decay. The Cape 

 was in sad straits. It was passing through 

 a commercial crisis of long duration. 

 Still, some men strove hard to battle 

 against the unfavourable times. But these 

 were too much for our country, and gradu- 

 ally, in spite of the endeavours of the 

 Kotzes, Cloetes, Meleks, Bredas, Barrys, 

 Van der Byls, and Charles Manuel, the 

 sporting life of three-quarters of a century 

 may be said to have passed into oblivion. 



It is no purpose of mine to dwell upon 

 the change which came over South Afri- 

 can horse-breeding and racing after the 

 success of the Diamond Fields, and the 

 yet more affluent and influencing develop- 

 ment of the Gold Fields. I will only add 

 that the transformation of the financial 

 state of the land from one of difficulty and 

 of some desperation to such as the magi- 

 cian's wand brings forth could not fail to 

 affect both the trade of the horse-breeder 

 and the racing, if not the sportsman in- 

 stincts of the lovers of the turf. The 

 nature and character of the pursuits have 

 changed. The old state of things has 

 passed away, and the new is but a system 

 which does not exalt the true sport in the 

 eyes of those who love it for its own 

 essential and, I consider, elevating charms. 



Rome, July 16th, 1901. 



Shropshire "Block" 

 Tests » 



AT the recent "block" test of Shropshire 

 slieep carcases slaughtered from the 

 Sniithfield Club Show the following were 

 the results: — 



No. 398. — Shropshire wethers, first 

 prize in class and winners of the breed 

 cup; bred and exhibited by P. L. Mills; 

 age, 21 months; live weight, 7 cwts. 17 

 Ihs. the pen of three; average daily gain 

 of live weight, 0.42ftts.; average Aveight of 

 dressed carcase, 179 lbs. (18.5 fts., 182 lbs., 

 and 171 ftis.); average percentage of car- 

 case to gross live weight, G7.04. Slaugh- 

 tered by E. Diggins, 5, Chapel Street, 

 Somers Town. 



