It is feared that we shall lose altogether the breed of animal that is capable of such performances. For many years we have been studying to acquire increased power, and consequently pace, to the disregard of stamina. It stands to reason that the larger a horse is, cæteris paribus, the faster he can go; but it does not the least follow that his size should enable him to go on. Doubtless the object for which we get into the saddle is dispatch, and “the slows” is the worst disease our horse can be troubled with; nevertheless, there is a good old rule in mechanics which affirms “nil violentum est perpetuum;” and if your engine is to go with the weight and momentum of an express train, you must calculate on a considerable expenditure of fuel, and great wear and tear on the nuts, screws, and fittings of the whole. Now, Nature, although the neatest and most finished of workers, will not submit herself to the laws of commensuration. She will not make you a model in inches, and supply you with a work on a corresponding scale in feet. It would seem as if she only issued a certain amount of stores in the aggregate, and if you are to get more iron, she gives you less steel; you shall have plenty of coke, but in return she stints you in oil. So, if the living creature she turns out for you on your estimate is to be very magnificent in its proportions, the chances are that it will either fail in activity, or be deficient in endurance.
We have now established half-mile races for our two-year-olds, as, with some few exceptions, the most important events of our English turf—our very Derbys and St. Legers—are but a scramble of a dozen furlongs, with little more than the weight of a child on a very young horse’s back. With all the forcing by which art strives to expel nature, it returns, in this instance, as Horace says, literally with a stablefork,[[3]] we cannot get an animal to its prime at three years old, who ought not to arrive at maturity till twice that age. Still we continue to breed more and more for a “turn of speed,” utterly regardless of endurance, till our famous English racehorses have degenerated into such galloping “weeds,” that I myself heard an excellent sportsman and high authority on such matters affirm, in discussing the hounds-and-horses match, which was to have come off last October, that “he did not believe there was a horse at Newmarket that could get four miles at all; no, not if you trotted him every yard of the way!”
[3]. “Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret.”
This, of course, was a jest; but, like many a random shaft pointed with a sarcasm and winged with a laugh, it struck not very far off the centre of the target. Even our hunters, too (and surely, if you want endurance in any animal alive, it is in a hunter), we are improving, year by year, into a sort of jumping camelopard. Where are the strong, deep-girthed horses on short legs of thirty years ago? horses that stood just under sixteen hands, and could carry sixteen stone. Look at what people call a first-class hunter now! (and it must be admitted that, for the high price he commands in the market, he ought to be as near perfection as possible.) Look at him, as you may see him in fifty different specimens with the Pytchley or Quorn hounds, any hunting-day throughout the winter! He is a bay or a brown—if the latter, more of a chocolate than a mottled, with white about his legs and nose. He stands sixteen two at least, with much daylight underneath him. He has either a very long weak neck, with a neat head; or more often a good deal of front and throat, with a general bull-headed appearance, that conveys the idea of what sailors term “by the bows,” and argues a tendency to hard pulling, which, to do him justice, he generally possesses. He has fine sloping shoulders, and can stride away in excellent form over a grass-field, reaching out famously with his fore legs, which, though long, are flat, clean, and good. Somehow you are rather disappointed with him when you get on his back. With no positive fault to find, you have yet an uncomfortable conviction that he does not feel like it; and, for all his commanding height, you are subjected to no irresistible temptation to “lark” him. When Mr. Coper asks you three hundred and takes “two fifty,” as he calls it, alleging the scarcity of horses, the excellence of this particular specimen, his own unbounded liberality, intense respect for yourself, and every other inducement that can mitigate the painful process of affixing your name to a cheque, you seem to give him your money without exactly knowing why; but when the new purchase stops with you in deep ground the first good scenting day, after you have bustled him along honestly for two-and-twenty minutes, you think you do know why exactly; and, although you may be, and probably are disgusted, you cannot conscientiously admit that you are surprised.
I have not seen these sort of nags, though, in the Soakington country; I presume they all go to “The Shires;” and this brings me back, after a long digression, to Tom Turnbull and Apple-tree Farm.
There never was such a farm for coziness and comfort as that. Surrounded by an ugly though sporting-looking country, it possesses the only undulating fields for many miles round, and consequently boasts a view from a certain eminence called Ripley Rise, that commands half-a-dozen of the Earl’s best fox-coverts, the distant towers of Castle-Cropper itself, and no less than seventeen church-steeples. There are stately old elms close to the dwelling-house, and a rich and plentiful orchard, from which it takes its name, adjoins a snug little walled garden, celebrated for the earliest summer fruit, and the best plums in the district—thanks to the late Mr. Naggett, a far-seeing, shrewd old agriculturist. Apple-tree Farm is a good deal better drained than most of the adjoining lands; consequently its acres of arable return a heavier produce, and its upland fields are more calculated for rearing young horses than any in the country.
Nothing gives a colt such a chance as a fine high and dry pasture, on a slope, where he can exercise himself in the practice of going up and downhill, unconsciously strengthening his hocks and acquiring liberty in his shoulders whilst he is at play.
Horses bred on uplands, too, have a far harder and sounder description of hoof than those that have been accustomed in youth to splash about in rank, marshy meadows; and, strange to say, their very coats are finer, and their whole appearance denotes higher blood than can be boasted by their own brothers, reared on lower grounds. Those who profess to be acquainted with the physiology of the horse, affirm that the produce of Arab stallions and mares, if suffered to breed in the rich wet marshes of Flanders, would, in half-a-dozen generations, without any sort of cross, and from the sheer influence of keep and climate, lose every trace of their noble origin. The Prophet himself would not recognise the dull-eyed, coarse-shaped, heavy-actioned progeny, for the lithe and fiery children of the Desert.
Here, then, Tom Turnbull breeds and rears many a good nag, taking care never to have above one or two at a time, so that sufficient attention may be devoted to the yearling, and, above all, that it may have plenty of keep.
The Arabs, to go eastward once more for our proverbs on this subject, have a saying, that “the goodness of a horse goes in at his mouth,” and it is incredible by those who have not watched the result, what improvement may be made in the animal by the very simple recipe of old oats and exercise, plenty of both; indeed, of the latter, in contradistinction to work, a young horse can hardly have too much. It is exercise that forms his shape, strengthens his joints, hardens his limbs, produces action, and clears his wind. All the time a young one is out, he is acquiring something—either how to use his legs, or to obey his bit, or to conform his inclinations to those of his master; whilst, even should he be standing still and unemployed, he is at least learning to see and hear, accustoming himself to sights and sounds with which it is of the greatest advantage both to himself and his rider that he should be familiar. Also, it is far better for him to be breathing the cold outward air than the more luxurious atmosphere of his stable; and it is not too much to say, that a horse of three or four years old cannot be brought out too often, so long as you take care that he shall never go home the least bit fatigued.