Racehorse

“ The present draught-horse was produced, after many generations, all of which gradually approached the type desired. The slender racehorses, bred for speed and endurance rather than strength, are the offspring of generations of parents that had these qualities strongly marked. ”

“ If a number of racing men and breeders of racehorses were to gather round a ring, and five horses—say, Soultline, Prince Foote, Woorak, Desert Gold and Poitrel—were brought into the ring, would it be possible, if the onlookers did not know the horses or their pedigree—would it be possible, I ask—to pick out the real stayers? ”

“ To illustrate what I mean: our English racehorses differ slightly from the horses of every other breed; but they do not owe their difference and superiority to descent from any single pair, but to continued care in selecting and training many individuals during many generations. ”

“ The racehorses are trained not only to stand with their hoofs touching a line, but to draw all four feet together, so as at the first spring to bring into play the full action of the hind-quarters. In Chile I was told an anecdote, which I believe was true; and it offers a good illustration of the use of a well-broken animal. A respectable man riding one day met two others, one of whom was mounted on a horse, which he knew to have been stolen from himself. ”

“ In this ideal country of ours we ought to be able to breed the best racehorses in the whole wide world, and we should certainly be able to rear our own sires, with the assistance of occasional infusions of English blood. ”

“ Viscount Helmsley, who added to the nice things said by Lord Downe about the Press, who came in for a rough handling at last year’s dinner, suggested the institution of races for ponies up to 14.2, for the encouragement of the breed. Racehorses in the past have not always been the 16 hands animals that are now so common. ”

“ The clumsy-barrelled, cloddy-shouldered, round-legged, black family horse, neither a coach nor a dray-horse, but something between both, as fat as an ox, and, with all his pride and prancing at first starting, not equal to more than six miles an hour, and knocking-up with one hard day’s work, is no more seen; and we have, instead of him, an animal as tall, deep-chested, rising in the withers, slanting in the shoulders, flat in the legs, with even more strength, and with treble the speed. ”

“ And every horse that has once got among such a troop, bids an eternal farewell to captivity. Hence we find among these animals the pure Arab blood, we recognise the clumsy English cart horse, the pony, the thorough-bred, and the racer. In short, there is such a display of every breed as no horse-fair in the world is able to show. I especially noticed an enormous number of greys, piebalds, and black horses among the troops; and that the differences of colour are far more frequent among them than with trained horses. ”

“ It is scarcely possible to doubt that the long-continued selection of qualities serviceable to man has been the chief agent in the formation of the several breeds of the horse. Look at a dray-horse, and see how well adapted he is to draw heavy weights, and how unlike in appearance to any allied wild animal. The English race-horse is known to have proceeded from the commingled blood of Arabs, Turks, and Barbs; but selection and training have together made him a very different animal from his parent-stocks. ”

“ With race-horses selection for swiftness has been followed methodically, and our horses can now easily beat their progenitors. The increased size and different appearance of the English race-horse led a good observer in India to ask, "Could any one in this year of 1856, looking at our race-horses, conceive that they were the result of the union of the Arab horse and the African mare?" ”

“ The selection of a mare, relatively larger than the horse, is an important rule in breeding, and it is believed that much of the success of Arabian and other Eastern horses as stock-getters, has resulted from the application of this principle. They possess valuable traits, but condensed within too small a compass. When such an animal is put to a well-bred, larger mare, the fœtus has abundance of room and nourishment to develop and perfect the circumscribed outlines of the male parent, and acquire for itself increased volume and character. ”

“ What appears to favour this idea is, that horses vary much more than asses in their colour; they have consequently been longer domestic, since all domestic animals vary much more in their colour than wild ones of the same species. The greater number of wild horses, of which travellers speak, are small, and have, like the ass, grey hair, and the tail naked and frizzled at the end: there are also some wild horses, and even domestic ones, which have a black stripe on the back, and other marks, which nearly resemble both wild and domestic asses. ”

“ Let us then recognise this fact, that just as a man may transmit his nose, his eyes or his ears to his sons and daughters, just so may a horse transmit his bone, his muscle, his colour and his heart to his sons and daughters. So now we come to the secret: It matters not whether a horse is black or brown or chestnut—the essential thing the animal has to possess in order that he may stay is a staying heart.
Now, the first objection that will be put forward to this proposition is that every now and then a true stayer arises from a non-staying sire—I admit this is true. ”

“ This is equally true of the Barb or pure-bred horse of Morocco, and those of the northern coast of Africa, in Egypt, among the Turks, and indeed wherever the followers of the Prophet are to be found. It is unquestionable, that the influence of the Eastern blood among the choicest animals of modern Europe, has been followed by great improvements in racing stock. Yet it is equally certain, that the race-horse, both of England and the United States, has accomplished what has never been demonstrated as within the ability of their progenitors ”

“ There were, as it happened, only three pinto horses in the entire saddle stock, and these three were the last left of the entire bunch. Now a little boy or girl, and many an older person, thinks that a spotted horse is the real thing, but practical cattle men know that this freak of color in range-bred horses is the result of in-and-in breeding, with consequent physical and mental deterioration. It was my good fortune that morning to get a good mount of horses,—three sorrels, two grays, two coyotes, a black, a brown, and a grulla. ”

“ Fig. 385.—Horse, descended from a small wild species still found in Western Asia.
Ungulates, as the horse, need no other protection than their great speed, which is due to lengthening the bones of the legs and rising upon the very tip of the largest toe, which, to support the weight, developed an enormous toe-nail called a hoof. The cattle, not having developed such speed as the horse, usually have horns for defence. If a calf or cow bellows with distress, all the cattle in the neighbourhood rush to the rescue. ”

“ No breeder of horses has ever produced an animal that was not a horse. He may have brought about great and important improvements in the qualities of fleetness, or strength, or weight, or endurance, by careful selection of the sire and the dam; but the race-horse or the hunter, or the draught-horse or the war-horse, is but a horse of different qualities and powers, with the same skeleton, viscera, organs, muscles, which mark this species of animal, and with no other variations of structure than such as follow from the limited development of different parts for different uses. ”

“ To pick up a good-looking brood mare, in foal or with foal at foot, for nothing, was a temptation impossible to be resisted by many with such a weakness, as they travelled on horseback through the wild, outback places, behind their mobs of cattle and droves of sheep. ”

“ The British breeds of light horses include the Thoroughbred, the Yorkshire Coach-horse, the Cleveland Bay, the Hackney and the Pony; of heavy horses, the Shire, the Clydesdale and the Suffolk.
The Thoroughbred is probably the oldest of the breeds, and it is known as the “blood-horse” on account of the length of time through which its purity of descent can be traced. The frame is light, slender and graceful. The points of chief importance are a fine, clean, lean head, set on free from collar heaviness; a long and strongly muscular neck, shoulders oblique and covered with muscle ”

“ Everywhere there were visions of glossy brown backs, straining, heaving, swollen with muscle; harness streaked with specks of froth, broad, cup-shaped hoofs, heavy with brown loam, men's faces red with tan, blue overalls spotted with axle-grease; muscled hands, the knuckles whitened in their grip on the reins, and through it all the ammoniacal smell of the horses, the bitter reek of perspiration of beasts and men, the aroma of warm leather, the scent of dead stubble—and stronger and more penetrating than everything else, the heavy, enervating odour of the upturned, living earth. ”

“ Suffice it to say, that almost every civilised nation possesses several kinds of horses—differing from one another in size, shape, colour, and qualities: in size especially—since this fine animal may be observed not much bigger than a mastiff; while other members of his family attain almost to the dimensions of an elephant! Even savage tribes, both in Asia and America, are in possession of peculiar breeds of horses; and it may be assumed as a fact, that more than a hundred varieties exist upon the earth. ”

“ It was composed of living forms—the most beautiful known in nature: for in this man must give way to the horse. Not the unsexed horse of civilisation, with hunched shoulders, bandied limbs, and bowed frontlet—scarce one in a thousand of true equine shape—and this, still further, mutilated by the shears of the coper and gentleman jockey—but the wild steed of the savannas, foaled upon the green grass, his form left free to develop as the flowers that shed their fragrance around him. ”

“ In brief, the whole structure of the horses is pre-eminently adapted to swift running; they are admirable “cursorial machines,” as they have been called, and every part of the skeleton has been modified and specialized to that end; the narrow, rigid hoofs fit them for walking on firm ground and they speedily are made helpless in quicksand or bog. Did we know nothing of their mode of life, we might confidently infer from their teeth that the horses were grazers, feeding principally upon grass. ”

“ And the great Black Horse, with his inky mane and tail and his green-lighted eyes, ranged through all that region and added to his following from many bands till not less than a score of mares were in his 'bunch.' Most were merely humble cow-ponies turned out to range, but the nine great mares were there, a striking group by themselves. ”

“ When she runs from room to room she beats the floor with her fore-paws with a gallant little rocking-horse action. When she runs over grass she makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulating ripple of a sea-serpent, and her soft pads reverberate like muffled hoofs. ”

“ Other nations may have furnished the blood, but England has made the race-horse.
Without prosecuting this subject further, it may be enough here to follow out the lines of the Darley Arabian, the Byerly Turk, and the Godolphin Arabian or Barb, the main ancestors of the British thoroughbred of the 18th and 19th centuries, through several famous race-horses, each and all brilliant winners,—Flying Childers, Eclipse, Herod and Matchem,—to whom it is considered sufficient to look as the great progenitors of the race-horse of to-day. ”

“ ARE there any genuine wild horses in existence—that is to say, any that are not descended, like those of South America, from a domesticated stock? Naturalists have all concurred until very recently in answering this question negatively. They were of opinion that, as in the case of the sheep, the goat, and some other domestic animals, not a singular indication remains by which we can judge of the form, the colour, or the habits, by which the horse was characterized before it became the servant of man, or how far it may have differed from the present domesticated races. ”

“ Since the middle of the eighteenth century the practice of interbreeding with Oriental blood has been discontinued, and although half-bred horses were raced until the first part of the nineteenth century, the thoroughbred has ever since the foundation of the ‘racing calendar’ been the recognized race-horse, and his pedigree has been strictly and authentically kept. During the seventeenth century speed was not the sole qualification of a race-horse ”

“ The swift race-horse and the heavy pack-horse, the graceful carriage-horse and the sturdy cart-horse, the huge dray-horse and the dwarfed pony—these and many other "races" are so different from each other, that if we had found them wild we should certainly have described them as quite different varieties of one species, or even representatives of different species. ”

“ Under human care and selection, the horse varies so rapidly, that we meet with all extremes, from the dray-horse to the Shetland, and all colours from black to white. But the ass in the last five thousand years has varied little. It will not thrive except in hot climates, and centuries of careful breeding have not caused it to change colour further than from grey to white, [4] and have done little to make it a pleasant animal to ride, or big enough for heavy draught. ”

“ Eight horses: seven iron-grey geldings, every one of them swift and sure-footed, sound as the bell in his hand, and as like each other as seven claret coloured eggs in the tinamou's nest; and the eighth the gentle piebald mare—the madrina his horses loved and would follow to the world's end, now, alas! ”

“ Although every thoroughbred traces its ancestry in the direct male line to the Byerly Turk, 1690, the Darley Arabian, circa 1700, or the Godolphin Barb, circa 1725, and "it is impossible to find an English race-horse which does not combine the blood of all three," the experience of modern horsemen points to the fact that the blood-horse is as near to the Eastern horse as we should go with the stallion in breeding for the race-course or for ennobling baser strains. ”