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the devolopment of the training and paces of the haut manége in those which it is wished to convert to first-class saddle-horses for show and the public ride.

"People," says Count D'Aure, "pretend, and many persons are indeed convinced, that the racehorse has an exceptional construction; that his hind-quarter is exceedingly high, and his forehand very low; but they do not see that it is the result of the training, which gives to him this particular appearance, to preserve which should be the endeavour; for to try to change that disposition would be to detract from the rapidity of his paces. But let a horse be withdrawn from training, and let him be placed in the same conditions as one which has never run-that, instead of permitting him to extend his neck, it is held up and reined in; and let his hind-quarter be brought under the mass; then that horse which had appeared so ungraceful, will be seen to assume the most elegant forms of carriage, and show the most graceful, lightest, shortest, yet smartest paces; in point of fact, all that produced the elements of strength determinative of swiftness will be found to be also that which gives elevation of carriage, since the articulary angles, which, on opening, were in the best condition to ensure rapidity, are equally the most favourable conditions to produce a diminution, elevation, and brilliancy of action. In the race, the horse will appear to have the croupe high and the forehand low. In the riding-school, on the contrary, he will seem to have the forehand high and the croupe low; while the horse which looked handsome because he was round in flesh, which was considered to have the neck more raised and the croupe lower because he had never been subjected to training exercise, whose paces and action are shorter, the only kind he can show, will remain in his honest mediocrity, if the arms of the levers are short, and will be thrown completely into the shade on a comparison. The horse which has only restricted articularly angles always moves on the same plane; if he has not the means of pushing the rapidity of his pace very far, he has neither the faculty of shortening it to its last limits. I will support what I have just said with a few practical observations. From 1818 to 1840 I mounted at first sight, and without any preparation, more than forty thorough-bred stallions, the majority of which had been victors in several races, had never entered a ridingschool, never had a bit in the mouth, and never done any work but on the turf. Those horses became almost immediately as supple and subdued in action as Spanish genets. Among those horses I will cite Snail, Eastham, Napoleon, Pickpocket, and particularly Tigris, † the most remarkable horse both for elegance and quality that I ever bestrode. He had just arrived from England. He was brought to the manége of the Du Pin breeding-stud. I mounted him. After seven or eight bounds of pure gaiety, which I did not endeavour to suppress, he calmed down, became attentive, and ended by seeming to guess my slightest desire. At the end of half-an-hour he moved at so subdued and measured a gallop, that the best-trained horse that would have followed him would have been compelled to fall into a walking pace. Eylau, foaled at the Du Pin breeding-stud (sire Napoleon), which won the Paris Race Stakes, 17th or 18th September, 1839, and brought + Winner of the 2,000 Guineas, 1815.

* Won the Chester Cup, 1833.

back to the Du Pin stud after the races, arrived there on the 28th of the same month. On the 1st October I mounted him in the manége of the stud; on the 5th he worked with the steadiness, precision, and accuracy of a horse trained for twenty years to the exercise of the haut manége. Eylau is still at the Du Pin stud, and is considered one of the best horses o the manége. I could further cite Maitre de Danse, Pikok, Liberté, Arbutus, Jean Bart, Miss Annette, and several others belonging to Lord Seymour; † but it would be to recapitulate the same results. I cite these examples solely. to prove that the same means which made those horses victors on the turf, made them also first-rate horses of the manége. If now, by way of opposition to the celebrated racehorses I have just cited, I were to speak of all those horses which, with quick, yet restricted paces, are cited as excellently adapted for the manége, I would reply they are the very horses which require most trouble to train to the work of the manége. Of whatever kind, and however light, a horse may be, if he is wanting in regular proportions, it will sometimes require a twelvemonth before he can be brought to execute a work in the manége, which would be obtained in a fortnight from a racehorse. Unfortunately, many persons judge a horse fit for the work of the manége, just as others consider one good for racing purposes whose conformation is wanting in all accord. Such a horse, which necessarily will have a hard mouth, may sometimes run away with an ignorant rider; by him he will then be considered as well adapted for racing, because he is always disposed to go faster than is required. All these erroneous ideas would disappear with a rational study of anatomy and of animal mechanism applied to the exterior of the horse."

There are few readers, we think, who will deny the logical reasoning of the above argument. Thus, the reviled "kangaroo hindquarters," as we have read them called by some of the special cognoscenti of all equine defects of conformation, is no conclusive evidence of the degeneracy of the English racehorse, by the showing of two authorities of such acknowledged repute as Professor Houel and Count D'Aure. Other testimony of note therefore must be sought, elucidative on other grounds, of the various causes of those inroads of degeneracy on all improved Western races, which are pronounced infallible.

The theories of the great naturalist, Buffon, who admitted degene racy as constant, have found in later times writers who have attempted to refute them; and, as subversive of his doctrine of constant degeneracy, have put forward the doctrine of the improvement of races by themselves. The argument they have used for that purpose is: That it would be to admit degeneration in all animals in a state of nature, and that the best races of domestic animals have been formed by the means they advocate! But they lost sight of the fact that the animal in a wild state does not require an organisation that renders him appropriate to our wants; that the examples of animals which have been formed by the art and will of man for his various special purposes cannot at all apply to pure races, which of the equine kind are not applied to general service, but rather to the regeneration of kinds Was, when Count D'Aure wrote the above (1854),

*

The late Lord Heury Seymour.

for service. Many breeders of horses, as well as writers, who have treated upon them, have committed the error of comprising horses in the same category with bullocks and sheep; but examples taken from the latter races are of no utility whatever as guides to the improvement of the equine race.

That this so-called "exceptional conformation" of the English thorough-bred race-horse is not a demonstrative feature of the degeneration that is commonly attributed to his race, requires no further elucidation than the concurrent showing of the two able and experienced authorities whom we have cited; and that it is a form, the development of which was observed, and at an early period of the infusion of the Eastern blood so soon appreciated, that endeavours were made to preserve it, may be deduced from the fact that the pedigrees of our thorough-bred race-horses, traced somewhat high up, show numerous examples of breeding from subjects very closely related by consanguinity, resorted to doubtless sometimes with the view to increase certain propensions to which the family seemed disposed. How far a too-long persistence in this practice may have conduced to those deteriorative effects which the experienced breeders Rinsep, John Sebright, Houdeville, and others have demonstrated as infallible, by facts resulting from their long experience, even with domestic animals, where a lymphatic constitution is necessary, is a moot question that presents a wider field for more serious consideration in regard of the equine race. But to that in due course we shall revert hereafter, and proceed in that order which we think will best show those, who from the high temperature of their sentiment of national pride in our longreputed running-horses are sceptical, that they are accessible to such a thing as degeneration, have not only very positive and frequent evidences of it before them every season, if they will see it, but that there is no want of authorities, ancient and modern, from whose observations unmistakable inferences are to be drawn, that our thoroughbred race is not an exception to the rule that has governed and governs all races formed by crossings, and sought to be perpetuated on the Greco-Roman system of "pairing inter se," whence in part derived the principle advocated by some modern authors, of "improving breeds through and by means of themselves"-one which is not safely admissible for any continuity to Western races of any kind.

The most experienced veterinary surgeon and hippologist of his day, who in the middle of the last century raised the veterinary art in France from a condition but little better than that in which it then was in this country, and who wrote several works on different branches of the hippic science, which are still frequently cited as very noteworthy in France and Germany, speaks of degeneration as constant, and noticeable in the most improved Western races of his time.*

"Of all animals, transplanted or not" (says Bourgelat)," the horse seems incontestably to degenerate most; whether it be that we pay

* Claude Bourgelat, of Lyons, who to his great abilities in the veterinary art united also a skill in the art of equitation, that procured for him the appointment of Chef Ecuyer to the Riding School of that city. By his means a school of farriery was also instituted, attached to that establishment, and many pupils brought up under him extended through various parts of France that branch of knowledge and of the veterinary art generally, based upon scientific principles of practice that were greatly in advance of the prevailing ignorance and customs of the time throughout Europe.

more attention to the beauty and qualities of that animal than to those of others, or that in reality he changes more sensibly and sooner than they in transmitting form and in procreating his kind.

"The first means to guard against sudden and infallible degeneration were suggested by reflection and confirmed by experience. It was thought, and reasonably. so, that the good and the beautiful in all animated beings was dispersed in small groups over the face of the earth, and it was seen that the portion of beauty in each climate always degenerated unless it was united with another portion taken from a distance; hence the different peoples of the earth recognized successively the absolute necessity to mix the races, and to renovate them frequently with foreign races. Hence the peoples of Asia, of Northern Africa, and of Europe eagerly sought to give to the mares of their country Arab horses, to which those parts of the world are chiefly indebted for their finest breeds. Thence, also, in modern times attention was continually directed to provide the most reputed breeding-studs of Germany with Barbary, Turkish, Spanish, Hungarian, and Italian stallions; and hence, eventually, the care taken by the English to furnish their breeding-studs, at any price, with Arab, Barbary, Turkish, Danish, and other stallions. In this manner it was that in each region endeavours were made to prevent the inevitable debasement in the crossings; as also, the abasement of nature, whose impress becomes sooner or later disfigured, according to the climate and the food, for everywhere a term arrives at last, when matter wholly dominating over the form, changes, deteriorates, and vitiates it. This truth is so constant that if it be long neglected by ceasing to introduce into any European stall foreign stallions, the generations would eventually become extinct."

Though the examples of amelioration which he cites further on are addressed more especially to his countrymen at the period he wrote, and having in view alone those deriving from Southern races, yet the good sense comprised in what he says in that respect may be profited by from a different point of view than that which he seems to indicate. It is therefore with Huzard senior, a writer of more modern date, contemplating the subject of the regeneration of the horse in France from the stand point of yet more enlightened observation and experience, that we concur, and would have the prospective degeneration of our English thorough-bred race prevented by the resort to what he admits as sole principle of action for the attainment of a sound regeneration. "The horse of the East, the Arab only," is, in his opinion, "the source to which we should recur at frequent intervals," and those words merit especial attention on this side of the water.

"The Arab horse does well with all races, even with those that are larger and wholly different from him in shape. It may be said that, in infusing his forms into those of the race with which he is crossed, he communicates his qualities to it. It is not always in the first generation that this mingling of the forms is shown; we have elsewhere shown that those first productions were ill-put-together, but that if they were waited for to get race from them by crossing them again, their produce, better put-together, were nearer to the forms of the father and of the mother. Thus, for instance, an Arab horse crossed with a Norman mare will not produce a handsome foal; but that foal,

excellent by the qualities of his ascendants, will give others which will be handsomer and not less good than himself. Thus" (said he, adverting to us, the English, in illustration of his argument)`" did they with a patience and perseverance, which it is very desirable we should imitate, await the results, which they could not anticipate should be middling or bad; and they have been amply indemnified for their outlay, their persistence, and expectations by the regeneration and improvement of all their breeds."

A great truth was enounced in that remark of M. Huzard senior, one that should not be less recognized as the guiding principle in the present day, by the successes of those who had the good sense to foresee and patience to await the issue that placed our Anglo-Arab blood-horse for long years in front-rank of all the improved equine types of Europe. We need scarcely moot, for the reader's consideration, how much greater would now be that condition of assimilation that would favour the ready re-infusion of the Arab's ascendants of quality-his energy, temperament, organization, respiration, speed, and endurance-many of which are constantly proclaimed to be on the decline in our race-horse of the present day, and with some too-frequent justification, as exemplified by the performances of so large a majority of the numbers of two and three-year-old competitors which now every season sink so soon into the general ruck of mediocrity, if not "used up" or defunct before they have obtained even the adult age of their kind (4 years), the age before which no horse born and bred in our climate is physically capable of sustaining the ordeal of frequent exhaustive fatigue.

To that point, however, we shall revert more fully hereafter, and will here address our attention to the system of breeding in-and-in,” which, as regards all improved Western equine races produced by crossings, is condemned by the most experienced breeders and ablest writers on the subject.

[To be continued.]

DOWN

AND

UP AGAIN.

BY GREVILLE F.

"Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless continuity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful and successful war,

Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,

My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd."

CHAPTER IV.

The following portions of a partly-oblitered MS., written in the blank intervals of an old ledger, and saved from the wreck of a vessel off Yarmouth, probably the jotting of some returning American settler

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