102 Report vpon the Spring Show of Thoroughbred Stallions 
will, by that time, have had on the world." Possibly a similar 
sentiment may have entered the minds of the gentlemen to 
whom belongs the credit of proposing and carrying out in all 
its details, and to its consummation, the show of thoroughbred 
sires held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the 25th of January last. 
Whatever others may feel concerning the matter, they at least 
must, so far sympathize with Mr. Bentham as to be curious as 
to the effect of their undertaking upon horse-breeding. It may 
perhaps be permitted to the writer of an official, yet undictated 
report to remark that the occasion was a memorable one in 
the history of horse-breeding. The various legislative enact- 
ments which, in earlier times, were passed to guard against a 
failure of supply, or a falling off in the quality of our native 
horses rather savour of " that advice which costeth nothing." 
It was reserved for the Royal Agricultural Society of England 
to make the most liberal attempt on record to encourage the 
breeding, by farmers and others, of hunters and other half-bred 
horses. There is not far to seek for the raison d'etre of the 
recent show. Not for the first time has the cry been raised, 
and it is to be feared with only too much truth, that we in 
England are very badly off for horses of a certain class. That 
many of our carriage-horses come from abroad we know. Mr. 
Augustus George Church, while being examined before Lord 
Rosebery's Committee of 1873, stated that most of the horses 
working in the London General Omnibus Company's vehicles 
were foreigners : " it is not an affair of price, but of absolute 
scarcity," he said. Dealers have affirmed that they cannot procure 
a sufficient supply of high-class weight-carrying hunters ; while, 
and most important of all,ColonelRavenhill, ina lecture delivered 
at the Royal United Service Institution, drew a terrible picture 
of our shortcomings in the matter of army horses. Whether the 
Colonel's figures were absolutely correct or not is immaterial ; 
but that he was right in the main became obvious, when the 
Government sent him and his confreres to Canada to report 
upon the resources of the Dominion. This course drew forth, 
in some quarters, the remark that, with the exception of the 
Committee of 1873, the Government had never yet spent the 
price of the expedition in furthering horse-breeding at home, 
either by inquiry into home resources, or by trying to buy any 
of the horses that farmers may happen to breed. It is only 
quite recently that the Government stated that they were not 
prepared to inquire into the horse-supply question. 
It was stated just now that the cry of a scarcity of horses was 
not a new one. Nor is it. It would appear to have formed the 
ground-work of early Acts of Parliament, and was raised by De 
Blunderville in Queen Elizabeth's time ; by the Duke of New- 
