NflJs ON BREEDING RACEHORSES.



  The grand ideal principle which places this test so incom-
parably higher than any other based upon the individual
opinion of one or more judges is the absolute and blind
justice, personified in the inflexible winning-post, which alone
decides on the racecourse, and the irrefutable certainty that
neither fashion nor fancy, neither favor nor hatred, neither
personal prejudice nor time-serving-frequently observable in
the awards at horse-shows has biassed the decision of hotly-
contested struggles as recorded in the Racing Calendar for the
space of one hundred and seventy years. This it is that gives
to the English thoroughbred horse a value for breeding pur-
poses unequalled and looked for in vain in any other species
of animal creation.
  I apprehend great danger from the endeavor to improve
horse-racing-like any other human institution, not without
its shortcomings-by corrective measures, which might inter-
fere with that principle of blind justice; its fun(lamental laws
would thereby become undermined, and the building, which it
took centuries to erect, fall to ruins.
  Nothing but the framing of the racing propositions ought to
serve as indicator of what is required of the thoroughbred;
every state in need of an efficient cavalry should be careful
how to place authority for that purpose in experienced hands,
and see it used leniently, but on clearly-established principles.
As for the rest, it should be left to the immutable laws of
Nature to gradually mould, in outward form and inward com-
position, that horse which best answers those requirements.
  The centre of gravity in all trials of strength and endurance
is to be found on the racecourse: the straighter the running-
track the more infallible the result; the longer and steeper the
gradient the severer the test.
  As to the distances to be run over, I would recommend for
three-year-olds and upwards from one mile to two miles at the
scale of weights adopted in the rules of racing at present in
force in Prussia, which is about ten pounds above English
weights.
  Two-year-olds should-due regard being had to the time of



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