THE CORNISH HORSE. 
481 
any man’s judgment in particular; and I am aware of our obliga¬ 
tions to gentlemen who have incurred great expense and trouble 
in introducing horses, by which, to my certain knowledge, they 
have sustained great losses {Hear, hear). The late Mr. Trevanion 
lost, by that very superior horse. Artist, £60 or £70 per annum; 
and yet that was decidedly the best horse ever brought into Corn¬ 
wall. With this exception, and one or two others, our stallions 
have been very indifferent, the thorough-bred ones being mostly 
the refuse of other counties.—But Cornwall, though unhappily 
foremost, is not alone in the misfortune of wanting good service¬ 
able horses; and in respect of hacks and hunters, there is scarcely 
a county in England that has not reason to complain. This is owing 
to the modern style of racing, and not to any unfavourable change 
of soil or climate. In every department of life, men are anxious 
to discover the shortest road to profit. This they have done in 
breeding and training race-horses—perhaps to their own immediate 
benefit, but to the great disadvantage of those noble animals, and, 
indeed, to the breed of horses in general. They have gained their 
object—speed for a short distance; but to effect this, they have 
sacrificed the essential qualities of strength and duration. But the 
‘ Turf’ itself has lost ground as well as the horse ; and instead of 
being the arena of honourable contention, it has become the scene 
of gambling and fraud: so that victory, with its gains—for it has 
no laurels—too often falls not to the best horse, but to the most 
accomplished blackleg! (Hear, hear). This wretched system has 
produced a decided and a most injurious change in our thorough¬ 
bred horses, and, of course, in our half-stock .—I know that it is 
much easier to find fault, than to point out a remedy; yet I will 
endeavour to propose one. The horse I would recommend is the 
Cleveland bay blood, for this would form an excellent cross with 
some of our strong active mares; but we must first improve the 
mares themselves (Hear, hear). They have too much bone and 
muscle in their heads, and too little in their limbs; and, to cure this 
defect, we should introduce a strong active Arab horse. This 
would certainly do a great deal of good, and could not possibly do 
any harm. In support of this opinion, I may adduce the authority of 
Mr. Youatt, the first that could be obtained. I wrote to him on 
the subject. I gave him not the slightest clue to my own opinion; 
hut I asked him ‘ how we should best improve the Cornish horse V 
I did not know that he was a native of the contiguous county, and 
thus practically well able to enter into the very pith and marrow of 
such a subject; but I was surprised and gratified to find his answer 
containing the precise facts and reasoning which had made so deep 
an impression on my own mind, and that we had entered, as it were, 
into each other’s thoughts. The Old Forester and Craven, two 
