TRAINING OF THE ENGLISH RACE-HORSE. 
53 
work; that they are cool and clean on their legs, and sound on their 
feet.” ‘‘ The grand criterion in training horses, and the best of 
all others (at least I found it so), for a training groom con¬ 
stantly to bear in mind, is, that Nature will ever claim her rights, 
in regulating the whole, economy of the animal system.” 
Spare, light-carcassed horses, providing their constitutions be 
sound and they be good grubbers, there is but little trouble in 
training; the difficulties lie, in bringing to the post in a fit state, 
hardy, gluttonous, strong horses: ‘‘it is difficult to keep them from 
putting up flesh, so as to prevent them from coming too fat to post; 
and training grooms have sometimes been led astray from the 
circumstance that, if horses are fat in their insides, they 
cannot run for any length ; nor can any animal that is fat run 
its best pace but for a very short distance. Yet this rule does 
not, in the same degree, hold good as to the fat there may be on 
the sm'face of horses’ bodies. If hardy horses do not draw fine 
Irom the work they have been doing, they may, nevertheless, 
have got rid of a sufficient portion of the superfluous fat in their 
insides; and if I found them right in their wind for the 
length they may have to come in their races, I should not mind 
their coming out high. Such horses had better come out thus 
to run, than that they should be drawn fine for appearance sake, 
at the risk of very much injuring their constitutions ; and thereby 
disabling them from running in their best form for the length in 
which they may be engaged.” 
What follows this is too true to have escaped any practical 
horseman’s observation ; it is a point we have always firmly con¬ 
tested :—“ Another thins; to be observed in the trainino; of race- 
horses is, that they should be got ready precisely to the day on 
which their engagements are to take place, as they will not re¬ 
main in the arlijicial state of condition to which they niaij have 
been brought hat for a very short time; and unless they run on 
the day for which they are prepared, they will change more or 
less, and but seldom Jar the better” —almost always, we believe 
(cwteris paribus) for the worse: “ except, indeed, they should 
not have been forwarded sufficiently early up to the time they 
ought to run. Now, such horses as are employed for pleasure, 
saddle-horses, if regularly fed and exercised, and in other re¬ 
spects properly looked after, will be healthy and kind in their 
skins, with a sufficient portion of flesh in them; and they are 
then considered by the pad groom to be in condition ; and so they 
are, and in a very pro|)er state for the purjioses for which they 
are intended to be used. But, even in these horses, if neglected 
in any of the little essential regularities in the management of 
them, as that of being allowed to lie by only lbr|a few days, a 
change in their appearance from the healthy state described 
will be observed.” Ay! without this neglect of “ little essential 
