Report upon the Exhibition of Horses at Kilhurn. 585 
idle to expect that even a prize of 100?. will often attract to the 
rinsf such animals as " West Australian " and " Carnival " — I 
name two dead horses in order to avoid invidious comparisons — 
which were beyond all question well adapted for siring hunters, 
but of which the service fee was generally too high for any other 
mares than thoroughbreds. Among those actually exhibited, 
" Lingerer " looked more like getting park hacks, and " Curtius " 
was a scarecrow ; while " Caterer," although the sire of one of the 
heaviest racehorses ever placed in the St. Leger, " Leolinus " by- 
name, seemed more adapted for " across the flat " than for the 
hunting-field. The three best animals for the purpose required 
seemed to be the " Due de Beaufort, ' " Make Haste," and 
" Tassel ; " but by a country which, like England, has, in the 
words of an American trainer, " as many good thoroughbreds as 
there are pine trees in Virginia," it might have been expected 
that this class would be more largely and worthily filled. It is 
also expedient that the Royal Society should do its utmost to 
discourage blood in which the hereditary taint of roaring 
exists ; and in the opinion of Mr. Mannington, as given before 
Lord Rosebery's Committee, the Stockwell and Melbourne 
strains are open to suspicion in this respect ; while it is certain 
that " Wild Dayrell " has imparted to many of his descendants 
a tendency to knee-lameness, which is as transmissible as gout 
or consumption in the human subject, and should in the estima- 
tion of judges be fatal to any of his sons exhibited in an agricul- 
tural show-ring. 
The revival of coaching in England, and the very large prices 
which have recently been given by the enterprising noblemen 
and gentlemen whose teams delight the eye each succeeding 
summer in Piccadilly and Oxford Street, render it important 
that the coaching stallion, no longer of the Cleveland type, 
should receive more notice and attention than has hitherto been 
the case. Those exhibited at Kilhurn were a motley group ; 
and if one of M. Edmond De La \' ille's Anglo-Norman stallions 
had been entered for this class, he might not improbably have 
carried away the first prize. The winner, " Penzance," from 
Yorkshire — the property of Mr. Christopher W. Wilson — was a 
creditable Cleveland ; and the third prize-taker, " Lord Beacons- 
field," with less of the Norfolk trotter stamp than Mr. Burton's 
horse, which was second, has many admirable points. But the 
entire class is susceptible of considerable amelioration, and, 
with the attention to distinctive characteristics of which I have 
shown the desirability, it is to be expected that higher excellence 
will be attained in the future. 
