REVIEW. 
623 
to change the nature of his stud on account of this one four- 
mile race. But grant liberal bounties annually for several 
four-mile races, and you will make it the interest of all who 
start horses for those races to breed such as they think best 
calculated to win them. One of the many advantages result- 
ing from this plan is its simplicity, requiring Government 
only to determine the nature of the tasks to be performed ; 
namely, the distances to be run, and the weights to be carried, 
leaving all the rest to be worked out under the principle of 
competition by the owners of the horses.” 
We quite agree with the author in his views touching the 
bad consequences' of racing, as at present conducted, on our 
breeds of useful horses. The turf has unfortunately become 
an arena of gambling, rather than one of diversion or amuse- 
ment ; and, to make it worse, in recent days, men of all deno- 
minations almost have ventured, through cunning agents, their 
money on the uncertainty of events on the turf of which 
they possessed not the slightest knowledge, never even 
having seen one of the horses who w T ere to be the compe- 
titors for the race, on whose power and speed their gains or 
losses depended. Sporting men care little about the breed 
or description of the horses they match, providing they show 
capability of winning the prize ; under which circumstances, 
we see no reason why they should not be quite as well 
pleased, supposing the race were made four or five or six 
miles long, as one or two. Horses with certain strength of 
frame would sustain a long race as well as the present 
premature weak breeds do a short one ; nay, they would do 
so better, because they would not be permitted to enter on 
such a course before they had arrived at mature age, and 
were in possession of their fullest powers. In this manner, 
racing might, under certain amended regulations on the part of 
government, together with the concurrence (which we should 
not anticipate any difficulty in obtaining) of the Jockey Club, 
be made at once the source of every gratification and diversion 
derivable from it, and at the same time the fruitful origi- 
nator— the base-work, in fact — of the best-bred hunters and 
hackneys that can be produced. 
But this reform in the rules and regulations of the turf 
would avail little or nothing, did we not go at once to the 
