ON THE HORSES OF ENGLAND. 
99 
Some years since, when the Earl of Albemarle was Master of 
the Horse, his Lordship sent me to Cheltenham, to look at a car- 
riage-horse that had been reported to him as likely to make an 
acquisition to the royal stables. On setting out, I had but little 
idea that I should find the required description of animal in that 
part of the country ; but directly I saw the horse, I did not hesitate 
for a moment to make purchase of him, the price being but 110 
guineas. He belonged to Mr. James, the livery stable keeper 
there, who informed me, that an own brother to the horse, equally 
as fine an animal, had been sold the previous year to Mr. Elmore, 
who had sold him to the Master of the Horse to Queen Adelaide, 
for the royal stables. Two finer horses were never seen ; and they 
were both about sixteen hands three inches high. Now, these 
horses were got by a thorough-bred horse out of a Welch pony 
mare, not more than fourteen hands high. Had these circum- 
stances occurred in a stud, the results obtained would have proba- 
bly led to the repetition of the cross often enough to have elicited 
some highly important facts. 
I recollect that the dam of Selim, Rubens, and Castrel, was a 
very small mare, certainly not fifteen hands high, and with but 
little substance ; and yet the three horses just named, all by the 
same stallion — Buzzard — were three of the largest and best horses 
ever produced in this country. 
Foreigners possess more knowledge of breeding than we do, and 
this serves to guide them in the production of certain colours, and 
certain classes of animals, they having experience based upon a 
multiplication of facts, and upon that formed rules of procedure in 
matters which with us are, at best, left to hap-hazard. How 
seldom is it that we find any one individual possessing half a 
dozen brood mares ; and then he is probably not inclined to go to 
any extra expense to have them covered ; and the consequence is, 
that the first horse that happens to travel through his part of the 
country is the one he appoints for his mares ; and, however suc- 
cessful may have been the cross of one year, he finds, the next 
season, that the same stallion is no longer in his neighbourhood : 
he is therefore compelled to employ another, let him be ever so 
objectionable, simply from the circumstance of his travelling the 
country. 
With regard to colour, I must mention a fact that came to my 
notice in the royal stud at Hampton Court, and more than once. 
In several foals got by Actaeon, their dams having bred foals to 
the Colonel the previous year, we observed the marks to be those 
of the Colonel, instead of those of Actaeon. Actaeon had no white 
about him, but the Colonel had a white hind fetlock, and a white 
slip in the face, marks that could not be mistaken; and all the 
