EDITORIAL OBSERVATION S. 
303 
under such favourable circumstances as are met with in 
England. We possess no animal that fetches the same 
high price as the horse ; whose various traditions and quali- 
fications (such as breed, description, character, and other 
properties) diversify his value from an amount incredibly high 
down to one of a comparatively low figure; so loose and 
indefinably wide is this range of value, or at least of market- 
able price, that it may be said to extend from as high even 
as a thousand pounds, down to the low fraction of the 
hundredth part of that sum. The comparative scarcity and 
consequent enhancement of price for the same stamp of 
horse has, of late years, tended to the deterioration of our 
remounts of cavalry. The price being, by government, a 
fixed one — £26 5s. ; the only alternative officers of cavalry 
have, in making their purchases, in times of scarcity, is to 
take remount horses at a younger age — at three, and even 
occasionally at two years of age, in order to obtain a de- 
scription of horse which, with another year over his head, 
would fetch £36 or £40, and thus become out of reach for 
purchase by the regulated or fixed sum. This will afford 
one main reason, and the principal one perhaps, why our 
cavalry are not mounted so well as they were some years 
ago ; though still, without inferiority ; and still, probably, 
superior to the corresponding troops of most other nations, 
— in as far, at least, as their horses are concerned. 
There is a work “on Cavalry,” by Captain Nolan, recently 
published, commanding a good deal of attention at the pre- 
sent moment, owing to its applicability to the existing junc- 
ture of our expeditionary affairs ; from which we may, on 
the occasion before us, cull a few extracts not less amusing 
than instructive to us: at all events, as far as the cavalry 
warfare can concern or interest us. Instead of taking our 
extracts from the work itself, we will seize the advantage of 
a condensation of the Captain’s observations presented to us 
in the Times paper for one day in March last. They come 
to us in the form of “ Review,” and run as follows : — 
CAVALRY, ITS HISTORY AND TACTICS. 
“A very seasonable little work, under the above title, has 
just been given to the world by Captain L. E. Nolan. The 
