289 
THE REPORT OF THE ROYAL COM- 
MISSION ON HORSE-BREEDING. 
I suppose that the minutes of evidence taken before the Royal 
Commission on Horse-Breeding, which, together with their 
Third Annual Report, have just been presented to Parliament, 
may be held to exhaust the conditions and prospects of our 
floating horse-population up to date. There seems nothing 
more to be said. 
Lord Rosebery's Committee did much the same in 1873. 
But there is an important difference between the two inquiries : 
whereas in 1873 the evidence was taken for purposes of in- 
vestigation, in 1889 the evidence was taken for purposes of 
action. The Royal Commission, like the Rosebery Committee, 
investigated causes ; but it is a body able to deal, and dealing, 
with the effects of those causes, which the Rosebery Committee 
was not. Persons concerned with the present and future of 
horse-breeding will at once realise that this difference imparts 
a particular value to the Blue-Book of 1890. 
In the nature of things the future action of the Royal Commis- 
sion — a body endowed with the motor muscle of action, £ s. d. — 
will conform, or at all events tend to conform, to the information 
gained from the valuable evidence of the thirty-three witnesses 
examined — veterinary experts, breeders, trainers, farmers, and 
country gentlemen ; and any individual so minded, and suffi- 
ciently persevering, can perplex himself considerably in establish- 
ing where the thirty-three authorities examined agree, where 
they differ, and where they neither agree nor differ. But, how- 
ever skilled in comparative criticism or the science of Blue- 
Books, this individual must be industrious. The 4,014 ques- 
tions and answers, ranging as they do over the wide field of a 
wide subject, and over a variety of local, social, and economic 
considerations, may "put off" many people. Even with the 
assistance of an excellent digest, such persons as have not much 
time to themselves may not care to persevere. I am going to 
try to save them trouble by summing up the evidence given 
upon what seem to me some of the most interesting and most 
essential parts of the inquiry ; and I am encouraged to make 
this attempt in the pages of the Royal Agricultural Society's 
Journal because the Royal Agricultural Society has for years 
past been at the pains of keeping its many members alive to 
the importance of horse-breeding, and actually initiated (with 
its premiums for stallions, offered for the first time at the 
Newcastle Show in 1887) the work which is now in full swing 
under the auspices of a Royal Commission, 
VOL. I. T. s. — 2 U 
