BREEDING HORSES. 
419 
last twenty years, worked out the less speedy powers of 
horses. A few days ago, the last mail coach, the Dorchester 
and Exeter, was taken off the road. Such men as the Squire 
and his friends no longer get upon hacks in London to meet 
the hounds in Northamptonshire; but the Baron and his 
friends risk their necks instead on the Great Northern 
Railway. 
The fashion was set of driving a phaeton and ponies, for 
which ponies were bred, till we might really suppose some 
wished to realise the bard’s words, and be “ drawn by a pair 
of little atomies,” behind which may be seen the wealthy* 
citizen, his wife, and children. Here, then, are the causes of 
the decline of the breeds, not only of our former kind of 
saddle horses, but of other useful varieties for which we now 
have no use, unless for the army, for the remount of which 
at the former period stated, very good selections for its 
different branches could be made, at the regulated prices. 
This cannot be done now, from the scarcity of these varieties. 
There are plenty of horses, vide No. 74, Veterinarian for 
February, 1854. Mr. Goodwin wrote “ we have double the 
number of horses racing now than formerly,” and remarks on 
the “ abuses of the system,” vide No. 29. Captain Rous has 
done the same, vide No. 71, M.R.C.V.S., his remarks in 
quoting Craven, and your own, Mr. Editor, repeated con- 
demnation of it ; but, as Cecil remarks, “ it is a question with 
which it is useless to deal,” it being most remunerative. 
Although speed and bottom, abstractedly considered, 
depends upon blood, yet not only in thorough-bred, but in 
other varieties of horses, it also depends upon shape and 
make, for many horses are speedy without bottom, others 
again have bottom without speed, from this cause alone, but 
are deficient in that “ life and spirit of super excellent kind,” 
which produces speed and bottom only to be known by trial, 
arising solely from breed , when “ they race in all forms,” as it 
is said. For instance, a horse that has racing form for speed 
has stride, which a horse of opposite form has not, yet has 
bottom, because not exhausted by speed — and it is not diffi- 
cult to understand this — is very different from the bottom 
arising from breed. In other words, if the former covers at 
“one boundf 24 English feet,” and the latter cannot, he 
by Parliament, then comes the pinch, increased taxation. No doubt there 
are great advantages in steam, but there are also disadvantages, and this is 
one, the diminution in the supply of varieties of horses. 
* The Chancellor of the Exchequer should tax this fashion, if the object 
is to breed army horses. 
t At Newmarket, there arc two courses, the long and the round. The 
