"It just suited, as I wornt over sweet on my pup, so then I makes the match, and gets Jack Peart once more to hold the ready,' the two'quids.' I then goes over to a cove' called Bugle Eye, one o' us, and says to him, in a low woice, We mustn't lose this yere.'

"Wot, kant yer win?' says he.

"Not exactly,' I tells him.

"Well, get him to kill fust,' says he; we may think o' summut as 'll do instead.'

"I got it,' says I, inspirated like; it come to me all of a sudden ; weel make a 'a win, tie, or wrangle' on it; and lookee yere, Bugle, I'le tell yer how weel work it: you go outside under the winder, and take Tom's old black-an-tan bitch; she knows her way upstairs better nor any on us, and won't be kept out o' the pit no how. If it taint all right with the pup, I'le give George the wink, and put him 'fly,' to undo the room door, then I'le go to the winder and throw it up as if it were horful ot. Directly you hears me whistle, careless like, you loose the bitch and hi! hi! her on, and she'el be up, and in among 'em in a jiffy, while pup's a killing. That'll spoil it all. Weel have a row and break up the match; you and Harry must come and help 'jolly.' Jack 'll stick to the stakes, and weel meet and divide arterwards.

"Well, my lord, it all come off just as weed a-planned it. His young un killed ripping, and made rare good time for him. Then it were our turn, and the white pup got pinned by the nose, and hesitated; so says I, 'how precious ot it is!' and winks to George, who opens the door, and I goes to the winder a whistling. Bugle Eye were at his post, and took the office from above like a hangel; for instantly, helter skelter, a-rushing like a bull, in bolts the black-an-tan bitch; head over heels she bundles into the pit, knocks over the pup, sets to a smashing the rats, and plays old Harry with the whole concern, stopping the match. Such a row as come out of it was never yeard. We pretty nighgot at it' among us, but it was half gammon' o' our side. Peart wouldn't part with the blunt, but hooks it,' and we just managed to wind up about closing time and get clear of it all. After this, at a late 'boozing ken,' I snacks' the coin between us.

"There, my lord, although its agen me to tell o' this ere bit o' 'besting' now as I'me respectable, nevertheless its all genuine; its been done afore by my betters at higher games, and will be done agen no doubt, especially by them as lodges in Short's Gardens,' and kant raise a chink in their kick.' There's one thing anyhow I think you'll agree with me-its better nor downright cheating, and I consciences that this way my lord. Old fogies used to say as ow that cheating never thrives.' Now blow me if I aint thrived hever since that blessed night.

THE ENGLISH RACE-HORSE OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Is there any just reason to believe that the English breed of racehorses of the present day has degenerated, as has been alleged, from that reliable speed and stamina for which they have been so long reputed in the contests for the higher prized and most arduous races of the English turf?

To what, if well founded, is this degeneracy to be attributed?

Does the reproach derive solely from the of late years frequent defeat of the unreasonable expectancies of owners and trainers, as of those of the public, who, on the faith of over-sanguine anticipations, founded upon mere report, the previous private or public performances of the horses, and their apparent so-called "public form," consider their winning a race "a moral certainty," and incur loss, as the penalty for relying upon an unvarying exhibition of the same speed and stamina in contests exacted from them in quick succession throughout the same season at two and three years of age? or,

Are the reasons which would warrant a belief in the alleged degeneracy derived from several anterior concurrent causes? which the selfdefeating practice adverted to, of owners who, slaves to custom, have not the good sense and resolution to forego something in the present for the more reliable ensurance of prospective advantages, renders more influential in eliciting and promoting the alleged degeneracy.

It is not our purpose to discuss the motives that may or may not have actuated owners in the past or present to subject a property, because so costly, and always so damageable as a race-horse of goodly promise, and assiduously trained, to the untimely ordeal of contending at two years of age with the wonted frequency in their first running season for the prizes of the Turf; that being a matter altogether within the domain and volition of the proprietor, and which, all else failing, has, for its clenching justification, custom, and "the owner's right to do what he likes with his own."

But of the number of those concurrent causes which may be the primitive agents of an alleged degeneracy, is not the long-continued practice of breeding in too close consanguinity, or breeding in-and-in, one of the most potent, and more detrimental in our climate, restricted choice and area, than is generally thought? Duly considered also by the light thrown upon it by eminent practical authorities and writers, it may contribute some elucidation of the grounds for a belief of a very possible degeneracy induced thereby.

Contemplating the several points comprised in the above interrogatories as embracing a subject of public interest, we think it should be considered in the same light that it has at length been found necessary to regard other subjects which have now irresistibly forced themselves upon public attention, and which are being discussed on broader grounds of national interests than has hitherto been the wont in this country. We will therefore go beyond the narrow sphere within which this subject has also been restricted by too much self-sufficiency, prejudice, and a regard for individual and class susceptibilities, which have

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so long formed self-raised obstacles to a concurrent real progress with other nations in many departments of political economy.

Convinced, by years of observation, that the long-prevalent selfgratulating belief that we were in advance of all the world in every thing, and that the highest efficiency in every pursuit, art, and profession was to be acquired without travel to it by the road of science, was a sentiment illustrative only of "the pride that pulled the eountry" back, if not "down"-that, had we but deigned more to look beyond the pale of our insular individualities and notions to the light diffused by thoughtful and practical students of progress in other countries, we should not have been behind them in many, instead of in advance, and in front line with them in very many more-that, as on several other subjects, many of the most important contributions to the knowledge and advancement of the hippic science in all its relations to the noble animal, whose generous instincts and faculties are utilized by man to his wants or his pleasures, have been made by men neither English born nor bred, and that many of those contributions from without, have of late years become not only known to, but accepted as worthy of note by the more enlightened professors of a calling which, heretofore but little considered in England, has now raised itself here also to the dignity of a science-we shall avail ourselves, wherever bearing upon the questions before us of the light thus held to us from without, in aid of their discussion and approximate solution.

What is the meaning implied by the term degeneration? What are the circumstances in which it is correctly applied, and which it is considered to denote by practical authorities and writers of eminence who have made the horse the study of their lives, as a science and a profession?

M. Ephrem Houel, professor and lecturer for several years at the Ecole des Haras, in France, says in his "Cours de Science Hippique :" "A horse is degenerated when he is no longer fit for the particular purpose for which he was precisely destined; a horse is also degenerated when he deviates so much from the characteristics of his primitive stock that his organization is considerably affected by it. There are thus two kinds of degeneration-one which relates to the unfitness of the subject to a special purpose; the other to his aberrance from the primitive stock."

Although this proposition will be evident to the most ordinary capacity, M. Houel cites for its better comprehension the following example:

"I was one afternoon at the house of a farmer who occupied himself with the breeding of horses; and we examined together a filly, the production of a strong draught mare, by a half-blood stallion. She was a fine beast, of strong build, with good loins, a good head, powerful limbs, and a croupe in the right direction. Nevertheless the farmer, accustomed to the hollow backs, the projecting hips, and big massive heads of the heavy draught-horse breeds, considered this filly was degenerated. She did not at all come up to his idea of a draught mare. In point of fact, and considered by the light of reason and science, she was ameliorated; for she deviated less from the primitive type, without losing the advantages of strength and bulk which her destination might require. Nevertheless, the breeder would have been in the right if the mother had been served by a horse of spurious breed, badly conformed,

or of little reliable ascendency. In that case the filly might have lost her fitness to draught-work without gaining anything in orm. That would be then a real degeneration.

"I will now cite a contrary example. The English race-horse, deriving from the Arabian horse, is degenerated in the eyes of the physiologist, because he has not retained the primitive aspect of the race.

"But the opinion of the physiologist is as false in the hippic sense as the breeder cited above. In neither of these two cases is the horse degenerated. In the former he has gained in harmony and in race, without losing anything in aptitude; and in the second case he has gained in aptitude without losing anything in race.

"Nevertheless, it should be observed that, in cases where a modification produced in a race tends to impress upon it a retrograde movement from its type, whether that modification be restricted, or that it answers the purpose required, there is evidence of a condition of form, &c., which denote a tendency to degenerate.

66 Thus, reverting still to the examples we have chosen, we say that there is a tendency to degenerate in a race of draught-horses, which was originally well conformed, when to give greater bulk and propension to draught it is crossed with a yet coarser race, though still more appropriate to draught-labour. But it cannot be said that it is absolute degeneration, since it is the product, or the act of man's will, and had a predetermined and rational object.

"There is also a tendency to degenerate in the formation of pure Western races, and particularly in the English thorough-bred race, when to appropriate it to racing purposes it is transformed into a special race, which no longer retains the conformation of the horse of the Arabian type, from which it is descended. In that instance there is certainly no degeneration; but there is a tendency to degenerate from the primitive type."

Though the line is here very finely drawn by Professor Houel, it is nevertheless perspicuously and correctly defined; and while it clearly points to a degree of departure from the type to which it is genetically related, it refutes nevertheless the alleged degeneration of the English race-horse of the present day, in the commonly understood sense of that word. It moreover as clearly designates the English race-horse as constituting a special, though an artificial production and type, the act of the will of man, effected and perceived doubtless by degrees only for some time, but recognised by experience as appropriate to the purpose required.

The modification in form which thus tends to impress upon the English thorough-bred horse an obvious departure from its type, though a retrograde movement as it may seem, is nevertheless a conformation which adapts it better to the special purpose to which it is appropriated, than if under the circumstances resulting from that appropriation it retained, or could even retain, the conformation of its Arab type.

In this country even, where most men, from the peer to the peasant, assume to be judges of a horse, and who have now long been acquainted with this conformation in our running-horses, it is not only considered by many as ungraceful, but reproached as ugly, by those who, ignorant of the cause which of necessity operates in producing it, look upon it as a degenerate form. This opinion obtained also, for some time, on the

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continent-in France, Germany, Russia, and other countries-where it was considered a mal-conformation, and an ungraceful departure from the beau ideal of a horse.

To illustrate the sense in which Professor Houel applied to the English race-horse this gain in aptitude without loss of race, more clearly to the general reader, we will adduce by way of homely example the gain in aptitude to the human frame for a special pursuit, which the muscular arms and pectoral development of the blacksmith, and the legs and thighs of the acrobat and dancer present, derived respectively from the training and constant exercise of those limbs in their mutual occupations. To the physiologist these developments of armand-leg power in the human form, acquired always in excess over the other less-trained limbs of the same individuals, present that want of harmony in the collective form and proportions of the human body, which in his eyes present a marked degeneracy from the Caucasian human type. Yet, that these are in reality but modifications of individual form in a life-time merely, i. e., not transmitted hereditarily to their progeny, should be known also to the physiologist; for, in the sense of the words of De Balzac," the aphrodisian attribute of beauty is an under-current that re-emerges ever at intervals from the depths of the human-tide of life," in proof eternal of the ineffaceably reproductive impress which Nature has implanted in the blood of race. Emerson had, doubtless, this conviction also on his mind, when he said, "Whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it is resisted by other forces. Civilization is a re-agent, and eats away the old traits. Trades and professions carve their lines in face and form."

But to return to our more immediate subject, and as bearing upon this deviation of the English race-horse from the form of his eastern progenitors, the perspicuous remarks of Count d'Aure in his admirable work, entitled "Cours d'Equitation," + will contribute not only to elucidate this point of the discussion, but to show how little ground there is to consider it as an evidence of degeneracy.

In the chapter that treats of "horse-racing," which is very worthy of notice, and in which the prescriptions relating to the training of young horses are traced with masterly hand, is to be found a dissertation, which has for object to refute certain erroneous opinions too generally admitted in regard to the race-horse, and which leads to a neglect in

*" Arabs, Barbs, and Turks,” as we have seen affirmed; but the application of the latter denomination as a race is rather a loose inferential one than a correct one in regard to the stallions which may have derived from Constantinople by gift or purchase. From the establishment of the Turks in Europe to the present day, the best horses of the Sultans, State Dignitaries, and Governors of provinces, were derived from the Emirs and Sheikhs of the Bedouin Arab tribes as presents or by purchase, or from the tributary Beys of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers (Barbs). From the days of Amurat, the founder of the janissaries, the spahis or Turkish cavalry, like their cavalry regiments in the present day, were and are Turkish only, both men and horses, by name, as derived from Turkish-European provinces. Horses and men were mostly Sclaves, Bulgarian, Polish, Hungarian, Crim, and Caucasian: but there never was a Turkish race of horses; and the Turkish cavalry was always much inferior to the Persian cavalry of the Sofis, of the purer eastern race.

"Cours d'Equitation, par le Comte d'Aure, Ecuyer en Chef de l'Ecole de Cavalrie." Had Count d'Aure's work been solely a treatise for the use of military schools, we should have abstained from adverting to it here; but it contains many matters of interest to breeders as well as to horse-breakers, trainers, gentlemen riders, &c.