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applied is intended only for the purpose of keeping the horse’s head 
in its proper position, and in its use and application has no more the 
elements of cruelty than the lady’s corset or the “ masher’s ” collar. 
A love of horses, and indeed a knowledge of their nature and 
habits, has been a characteristic of many nations of the earth from 
a remote period. The Medes and Parthians with their flying 
squadrons of mounted bowmen, the Olympian games of the Greeks, 
and the hippie contest of the Roman Colosseum furnish positive 
proof of the inclinations of different nations in this respect. 
Moreover, even the nomenclature of those early days which has 
been handed down to men of our own generation attests the 
prevailing love of the horse, for the name Philip is of Greek origin, 
and signifies “a lover of the horse,” while the hippodamoi were 
horse-tamers. 
Some little while ago a pillar of the turf, himself the soul of 
honour, and against whom the venomed voice of scandal has never 
been and never will he raised, said to me : “ What an extraordinary 
thing it is that no one can tell the exact and absolute truth about 
a horse! ” And so it is, from the days of old when the wooden 
horse containing a phalanx of the besieging host was introduced 
within the walls of wind-swept Troy, down to the present day, 
there are countless instances of the noble animal being put to an 
ignoble use. It would be out of place were I to allude at any 
length to the frauds which have been practised on the turf concern¬ 
ing which such astounding revelations were made not long since. 
The sport, it might almost be called the profession of horse-racing, 
when conducted upon strictly honourable principles, is, apart from 
its exciting nature, calculated to be productive of beneficial results 
in perpetuating a more perfect posterity, for the speed, strength, 
courage, and endurance, which many an equine champion has 
exhibited, is generally handed down to his progeny; but it is when 
these gifts of nature are not allowed to be put forth, and when, as 
sometimes has happened, horses are prevented from doing their best 
to win a race, that the humiliating reflection comes across one’s 
mind as to which is in reality the nobler animal, the man or the 
beast, the active or the passive agent of dishonesty. Consider for 
one moment the case of a handicap, where the weights apportioned 
to the different competitors are so adjusted that it is supposed to be 
within the power of any one to prove the winner; and suppose also 
that a certain horse had been held back purposely in some previous 
contest; the weight apportioned to that particular horse in the 
