4 MR. percivall’s introductory lecture 
and cattle, I will not pretend to say : certain it is, that one county 
produces one description of horse, while another county or dis¬ 
trict brings forth something possessing differences, which, though 
not general or important, are sufficient to enable us to say in 
most cases where each animal has been bred and brought up. 
The grand first cause, however, in all these changes—that by 
the steady prosecution and scientific management of which, they 
have been with such success brought about—appears to me to be 
breeding; by which I do not only mean the procuration of original 
stock of good description, but the continual progressive cultiva¬ 
tion of that stock in the progeny, by the greatest care in rearing 
and feeding it, and the nicest selection from amongst it of indi¬ 
viduals best qualified for future procreation. I believe a great 
deal more depends upon this last circumstance than upon the 
original characters or attributes of the parents. 
Ab origine , there could have been but one single breed or 
kind : climate and soil have, doubtlessly, had their influences in 
multiplying and varying the produce ; but I believe that we are, 
beyond every thing else, indebted to what I would call, culture 
in breeding . We have progressed from good to better—-step by 
step, losing sight of no subsidiary help—until we have attained, 
as I said before, a perfection in horse-flesh unknown in the whole 
world besides. 
A question which seems naturally to follow the one we have 
just been examining, is, What has led to all this pains-taking in 
Britain in regard to her breed of horses? The natives must have 
had some constant stimulus to have kept so much on the alert 
on this domestic production in particular. Why, yes! The sti¬ 
mulus has been the high prices horses have brought in the mar¬ 
ket, and especially those of blood and strength ; to attain which 
perfections, either separate or combined, according to the pur¬ 
pose for which the animal w r as designed, has ever been the con¬ 
summation of the breeder. And what has led to such high prices 
for horses? In particular, the national sports of racing and hunt¬ 
ing, which have created a sort of native, indigenous pride in an 
Englishman, to be possessed of a good horse. The prices we 
of the present day are in the habit of paying for our horses, even 
in our own country where they are bred and brought up, are to 
a foreigner all but incredible: from one to five thousand pounds 
sterling are paid for a race-horse ; from one to five hundred for a 
hunter; and as much as half these latter sums for good hackneys 
and carriage-horses. A standard of value, gentlemen, which we 
cannot regard but with the highest degree of inward satisfaction ; 
since, were once the prices of horses to grow low, one might rea¬ 
sonably quake for the practitioners of veterinary medicine. Tor, 
