RUNNING HORSES AT IMMATURE AGES. 
609 
RUNNING HORSES AT IMMATURE AGES. 
By Mr. — , m.r.c.v.s. 
In an article in an old number of the ‘New Sporting 
Magazine, 5 headed “Two-year-old Derby favorites, 55 by the 
brother — as a literary sportsman — of our lamented friend 
Nimrod, “ Craven, 55 we find it stated, as the result of a re- 
trospect of turf transactions, that, “ to my (Craven’s) humble 
thinking, for one racer that can bear two-years’ training, at 
the earliest period when his powers can be made available for 
the purposes of the turf, a hundred are irretrievably ruined 
in the attempt. I look to the great two-year-old stables, and 
find them incapable of turning out a Derby or a Leger win- 
ner. I ponder upon fourth-class horses carrying off the 
Derby as their maiden races . I mark Amato beating Tom, 
and I come to the deduction which experience tells me is the 
rule, viz. : — that in pinning our faith on two-year-old Derby 
favorites — 
‘ Fallimur, et quondam non dignum tradimus.’ ” — Hor. 
This is honest truth, the result of faithful observation. 
And to crown it with a why and a wherefore , needs no Solon 
of the turf or the stable : its explanation is self-evident to 
any man of common reflection, pretending to any knowledge 
of the an imaleconomy. Can a boy prematurely grown, or by 
good living forced to man’s height and aspect at the age of 
16 or 17, contend with a man, in reality as well as name, 
who has passed his 20th year? Nature immature is no 
match for nature pruned and perfected. Are these thorough- 
bred horses, by the “art and mystery” of the turf, to be 
made so to outrun nature, that three-year-olds are to per- 
form the pursuit of five-year- olds? Has the turf attained 
such perfection that nature forthwith must be subservient to 
art? Shallow minds are deceived by appearances ; and there 
is good reason to suspect that, on the turf, what looks like a 
horse is too frequently set down to constitute one : turf men 
in their superficial way of judging of horses’ powers, forgetting 
that what has the feel of bone is not bone, neither is that 
tissue which has the appearance of tissue. In a word, what- 
ever may be its exterior aspect, the animal machine at three 
years old is not what it will become in two years more, nor 
will it bear the same hard usage. Anatomists might prate in 
vain to a Newmarket jockey about ossification not being 
perfected in the horses’ frame until such and such periods, 
and about the ends of bone being still epiphyses, the 
xxvi. 79 
