ON BREEDING. 
9 
It is not, we repeat it, any fault in the horses, but in the system 
employed in training and bringing young horses to the start¬ 
ing-posts. They may be compared to hot-house plants; their 
growth and strength are increased in such an artificial man¬ 
ner, at such an early age, that, when they reach six or seven 
years old, they are no longer fit for the turf—making good the 
old adage, “soon ripe, soon rotten;’' they either die, or are sold 
to post-masters, hackney-coach drivers, or butchers; where they 
are doomed to a life of torture for a short time, a kind of train¬ 
ing for the knack-house. 
Such is oftentimes the fatal termination of many a good horse; 
they give the fairest prospect of perfection in the training stable, 
but from being rode at too early an age, and over-worked when 
their constitutions are incapable of supporting it, they may be 
compared to those stars which oftentimes shoot their brilliancies 
athwart the horizon, as exquisite as their duration is brief. 
Natural historians assert, that whatever is formed for long 
duration arrives slowly to maturity. 
The extraordinary means that are resorted to, in order to bring 
up a two-year old colt, surely never were intended by nature ; 
for by preternaturally hastening the deposit of bone, before the 
membranous part becomes fully developed, the bones become 
sooner consolidated, and never attain their natural size and 
strength. 
We are w r ell aware that we are now treading on forbidden 
ground, by interfering with the “ knowing ones;” as the opinions 
that we have ventured to broach are entirely at variance with the 
present practices and regulations of the turf—regulations found¬ 
ed on the accidental prescriptions of authority, for which custom 
has procured veneration, but which are opposed to the laws of 
nature and common sense. 
We do not flatter ourselves, by those remarks, with the hope of 
exciting any permanent impression on the sporting world, as similar 
opinions have been oftentimes so eloquently expressed in that 
esteemed and respectable publication “ The Sporting Magazine,” 
without any success; for “ they will not hear the voice of the charmer, 
charm he ever so wisely.” But we speak to the sympathizing 
few whose habits are not as yet fixed by the influence of false 
and corrupt examples, who are not deaf to the recitals of scenes 
of violence and pitiful suffering of one of the noblest animals in 
the creation, when forced by goads and whips, by the merciless 
drivers of butchers’ vehicles, hackney-coaches, and fish-carts. 
But to return to our subject. Circumstances will occur in which 
it is impossible for the farmer to breed in die manner recom¬ 
mended ; in which case he has recourse to a cross. This mca- 
VOL. IV. C 
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