ndiisEs. 
279 
the four-year-old will have cost the breeder £55 to £65. 
The dealer buys the animal at about that sum, unless he has 
size, character, breed, or hunting-like qualities, or has fashion, 
and can be matched to make a pair. 
Hunters are often sold at large prices, but these are seldom 
obtained by the breeder, as it takes two, if not three, seasons 
to make a hunter with “good manners,” and his breeder will 
have sold him before his education was so far complete as to 
command a big figure. 
The producer does not produce 75 per cent, of “ sound ” 
horses at four years old, and of these that are so a “ blemish” 
(which does not constitute unsoundness) often sadly mars 
his sale. Then comes the profit of the dealer, which is not 
often excessive. 
The user cannot obtain superior horses first hand, and 
very properly so, as the dealer is an everyday customer of 
the breeder, and it would be unfair if the latter allowed the 
user to pick the cream of his stud and so leave “ skimmed 
milk ” only for the dealer. On the whole, the heavy breeds 
of horses are the most profitable to the breeder, although few 
realise great sums. But a carting colt at two years “ off” 
begins to earn his keep, and so continues until sold; whereas 
an animal of the hunter, hack, or harness class is a dead 
weight until he has reached the age of four. It is not so 
much that the best class of horses have gone up in price as 
the cab, ’bus, dray, and tradesman’s horse, all of which within 
the last two or three years have advanced to an extraordinary 
amount. 
The fact of a large proportion of the horses now employed 
by the London General Omnibus Company and others being 
imported from Trance shows the great scarcity of English 
horses; and it is a fact that at the present time there are 
Yorkshire dealers in Russia in search of the better kind of 
harness horses. I see no probability of English horses 
becoming more plentiful or cheaper, and the present advanced 
price will not be found sufficient inducement to increase the 
supply.—Yours, &c., 
B. Cartledge, M.R.C.V.S. 
Norfolk street, 14th March, 1873. 
