620 
REVIEW. 
best horses, at the present da)', after winning a race of only 
two miles, disabled from ever running again. 
“ If, after reading these extracts from Mr. Smith’s work, the 
reader will look at the portraits of such of our older race- 
horses as have been handed down to us by the pencil of 
Seymour and other artists, he will find that the forms of 
those horses corresponded with the great tasks they accom- 
plished, for they had short legs, deep bodies, wide hips, and 
strong loins. The fine shapes of those horses show how little, 
as a race, they had been injured by their great performances, 
which commenced early in the reign of Charles the Second. 
“ With the exception of a single race at Newmarket, of four 
miles, and only run twice a year, two miles, two miles and a 
half, one mile and a half, and one mile, are the distances now 
usully run. Then how is this four mile race run by our 
present horses? By cantering through a great part of it. 
The tasks now performed, however, are enough, and more 
than enough, for the diminished powers of our present horses. 
“ Thus we see into what a vicious circle the present system 
of making momentary speed everything has led us. In view- 
ing the defects of our present race-horses, as respects useful 
purposes, I must add that they exhibit straight shoulders, and 
to an extent unknown to our turf so late as thirty years ago. 
This great defect in our race-horses is another cause which 
makes it now so difficult to breed the first class of saddle- 
horses, and is one of the results of breeding “ in and in,” for 
the purpose of following up a blood which has had momentary 
success in racing. Few people unconnected with the turf 
can imagine the degree of constitutional weakness exhibited 
by our present race-horses. The growing stock requires as 
much corn daily as they can eat, and for the first twelve 
months each has also the whole milk of a cow. It will here 
be said it is the early running which renders high feeding of 
the young stock necessary, but it is not so ; on the contrary, 
many of the foals possess so little vigour, that without un- 
naturally high feeding they would be mere weeds, as they 
usually are when bred by persons not intending them for the 
turf, who in consequence do not feed their young horses so ex- 
pensively. This high feeding sometimes enables those who 
breed for the turf to produce very large animals, but wanting 
that compact form which springs from much constitutional 
vigour in the parents. Nothing is so different as the form 
produced by extravagant feeding, and that which results from 
much constitutional vigour. 
“ It is curious to observe the helplessness of our thorough- 
bred foals, which usually cannot move about for some days 
