The Report of the Royal Commission on Horse-B reeding. 803 
This, I believe, was an opinion held by Sir Joseph Hawley, 
and I remember Captain Machell telling me at Newmarket last 
winter that, p-rimd facie, he was disposed to think Mr. Porter 
was right. None of our other witnesses, however, were pre- 
pared to assent to this dictum from their own experience. Mr. 
James Martin 41 agrees with Mr. Dawson that hereditary roaring 
will come out before a horse is six years old. 
Professor Brown thinks roaring has increased in the last 
twenty-five years. In answer to this question by Mr. Chaplin, 
" Do you attribute it [roaring] chiefly to this : first of all that 
there are a great many more roaring stallions, and secondly, that 
people are more careless about breeding from them ? " Pro- 
fessor Brown replied, <! What I mean I had better express 
in this way, that people were always equally careless, but as 
roaring is accumulative by being transmitted in this way, it 
naturally follows that every year there will be a certain increase 
in the number of roarers, and if the people who breed go on 
pursuing the same system, the result of that naturally must be 
that the disease constantly increases."' 42 
Mr. George Williams, on the other hand, does not believe 
roaring has increased in the last ten years, and does not think 
short distance races have anything to do with it. Horses, he 
observes, which have never made an effort in their lives become 
roarers from heredity, and both Mr. Porter and Mr. Dawson 
acquit racing of this charge, although Mr. Porter thinks five- 
furlong races irritating to everybody. I suppose he excepts the 
man who has backed the winner. Dr. Fleming dislikes short 
races, thinks roaring on the increase, and attributes this increase 
to short races and careless breeding acting equally. 43 
But I do not think that the sum of the evidence goes to 
show either that roaring has sensibly increased or that it can be 
attributed to short races. We must remember how many more 
horses are used for fast work now ; how many more people — 
consider ladies alone — hunt and really ride now ; how horses are 
almost universally clipped now. All this was quite different 
twenty years ago, and if you take these considerations into 
account and balance them against the proportion of roaring to- 
day (pro rata to our horse-population) as compared to the pro- 
portion of roaring, say, twenty-five years ago (pro rata to the 
horse population of that dav), I fancy the percentage would not 
be so very different. Sir Roger de Coverley's stone-grey horse 
belonged to an earlier period still ; but for my own part, although 
I might have excused him the indignity of punching him to 
41 2208. 
« 03. 
" 953, 958, 989. 
