50 
Half-bred  Horses  for  Field  or  Road: 
country ; and  there  is  one  thing  quite  certain,  that  as  we  have 
lately  seen  here,  a good  horse,  such  as  ‘ Isonomy,’  will  always 
remain  a great  attraction  to  the  great  body  of  Englishmen. 
“ E.  Tattersa.ll  ” 
General  Conclusion. 
I am  about  to  bring  to  a conclusion  that  which,  thanks  to 
my  friends,  the  reader  will,  I hope,  agree  with  me  in  thinking 
a useful  and  practical  paper  : indeed  it  must  be  a dry  flower  out 
of  which  the  bee  sucks  no  honey.  We  need  not  regret  in  the 
authorship  any  want  of  absolute  unity,  for  all  the  best  big  things 
are  the  result  of  many  lesser  efforts.  My  several  correspondents 
give  the  experience  of  their  lives,  preached  in  open-air  sermons, 
as  though  from  out  their  saddles  or  their  stables.  It  is  most 
remarkable  that,  without  concert,  they  all  should  be  so  agreed. 
If  my  friends,  or  some  of  them,  have  been  successful  as  breeders 
(every  why  has  a wherefore),  it  is,  I warrant  you,  because  they 
are  never-to-be-denied  sort  of  men,  who  would  have  succeeded 
in  anything  they  pleased  to  undertake.  Special,  talent  is  only 
general  talent  specially  applied.  The  man  of  reading  and 
culture  may  perchance  find  in  these  pages  at  least  some  old  truth 
in  a new  setting : there  is  matter  I hope  to  attract  even  those 
who  seldom  partake  of  the  dainties  which  are  bred  in  a book. 
Some  qualified  talent  might  with  great  advantage,  I think, 
be  specially  applied  in  following  up  a true  line  of  scientific 
inquiry  : I should  like  to  see  a paper  in  the  ‘Journal’  of  the 
Royal  Agricultural  Society  on  the  Philosophy  of  Horse 
Breeding.  It  would  also,  throughout  the  world,  be  of  practical 
importance  to  trace  the  effects  of  acclimatisation  * on  the 
English  thoroughbred  horse.  We  know  but  little  of  the  general 
laws  that  regulate  creation,  nor  have  we  perhaps  a great  desire 
for  that  knowledge,  it  being  so  much  easier  to  believe  than  to 
be  scientifically  instructed.  A grand  and  almost  untrodden 
field  of  inquiry  is  opened  up  to  those  who  desire  to  think  of 
things  beyond  their  names.  The  laws  of  embryology  ; variation, 
and  variation  under  domestication ; correlation,  descent  with 
modification,  unity  of  type,  the  tendency  to  reversion,  and  the 
law  of  extinction — all  these  laws,  and  many  others,  are  in  action, 
and  of  them  we  are  profoundly  ignorant.  There  is  the  fossil 
horse  of  America ; | why  on  that  vast  continent  were  all  horses 
killed  off? — and  until  reintroduced  by  the  Spaniards  there  were 
none.  Again,  in  Yorkshire,  Black  Cattle  gave  place  to  Long- 
horns, they  in  their  turn  to  Shorthorns — the  Shorthorns  that  are 
* See  ante,  p.  5. 
t For  the  geological  history  of  the  horse  in  ihe  Old  and  New  Worlds,  consult 
‘ Chapters  on  Evolution,’  by  Andrew  Wilson,  F.It.S.E.  London  : Chatto  & Windus, 
1883.  At  p.  94  are  diagrams  explanatory  of  the  early  horse,  with  three  and  four  toes. 
