become, is a mere bagatelle in the eyes of the majority of owners of horses, who are in the habit of measuring their success solely by the result of their betting operations. It is beside our purpose to inquire into the desirability of such a state of things, the existence of which cannot be doubted, but we are desirous of calling attention to the facts of the case, as bearing on the subject we now propose to discuss. No one can deny that a great betting mania has most thoroughly permeated all classes of this nation of shopkeepers, and the facilities for speculation are rapidly on the increase. To prove this we need only look ten or fifteen years back, and ask ourselves the question whether it would have been possible to invest such large sums on a paltry race in the country, as are now piled on in the metropolis itself, upon the petty encounters at Bromley or West Drayton? The extermination of the betting-houses, and the raid upon open-air speculators, would seem only to have sharpened the appetite of the British public, who now hanker more keenly than ever after the forbidden fruit, and pour their monkeys and ponies, their quids and dollars, into the coffers of commission agents, until the bookmaking clans have well-nigh become the dictators of the Turf, have raised palaces as tokens of success in their craft, and revel in their vessels of silver and jewels of gold, of which they have spoiled the nobles of the land. Backing horses, as the million are in the habit of doing, cannot but be a losing game in the end; and yet no succession of defeated favourites, no reverses of scratching, or nauseating repetitions of milking,' can abate one jot of their determination to come up again and again to a self-encouraged slaughter of the innocents. This tenacity of purpose in the indulgence of gaming propensities, fostered by the unbounded confidence of speculators in that glorious fellowship of prophets' which afford their pabulum of sporting news to a craving public in the pages of the daily press, has been the means of bringing down upon their own heads the punishment of their blindness, and from their impetuous raids upon the market to make their investments while prices are tempting, has resulted that system of fraud and chicanery, which threatens, unless timely checked, to prove fatal to the best interests of the Turf. It did not require much cunning to conceive, nor much ingenuity to carry out a system, by which winning might be reduced to a certainty, nor were there wanting those fallen spirits with which every community abounds, to batten on gains from an over-credulous public, who rushed like sheep into the trap set for fleecing them, and who, like a swarm of bees, were content to follow the sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal which lured them to their destruction. From owners of horses, and from the genii of the Ring, these harpies could not hope to draw their ill-gotten gains; but could they once enlist the interest and support of a body as yet uneducated in Turf pursuits, then only the cards were wanting to make the game their own, and for this purpose names of horses alone were almost sufficient; and it mattered little, so long as their existence was not called in question, whether they ever appeared on a race

course or not, for the victims were never wearied of waiting for that 'good thing' which they felt assured was yet in store for those who could bide their time. And into the services of those who divided the spoils was pressed a cloud of false witnesses, whose business it was to run to and fro upon the earth, and by dark sayings, and specious lies, to foster the interest of the public in some animal, which was merely the shadow of good things to come, but which, in the substance, came not at all, or came only to deceive. Such were the schemes which an unscrupulous few devised and perfected, and which their successors in infamy have handed down, enlarged and amply illustrated, to the men of our own time. From transactions such as these the atmosphere of the Turf has been corrupted and tainted, and the attributes of a noble sport have become a scorn and derision among a class of men who, neither imbued by the thirst of speculation, nor interested in the pursuit of racing as a national pastime, have taken an outside view of matters as they appear to be, and whose natural inference is that from the palpable rottenness of affairs on the surface, there cannot exist at the core that soundness and vitality which is as essential to the existence of racing institutions, as to the ordinary business and occupation of every-day life. The advertisements which crowd the columns of our less reputable sporting papers are a standing monument to the daily and hourly succession of fools and dupes, without which the profession of knavery could not exist; theirs is a hopeless case, indeed; but they by no means comprise even a small majority of the speculative public. The 'thirteen stamp' fraternity do not flourish by the patronage of the million; the bold Briton backs his fancy, and gives owners of horses credit for sentiments of uprightness which they do not always evince; but he is apt to grumble audibly should anything occur to depreciate the value of his market commodity, and without dreaming of his own indiscretion, to turn round upon those with whose property he has, in betting phraseology, been taking liberties.' Here there undoubtedly is a grievance; but it is a grievance the remedy for which lies in his own hands. It has indeed been urged, and with some appearance of truth, that betting, like other necessary evils, if it cannot be eradicated, can at least be controlled; that, like an epidemic, it can be mitigated, if not stamped out; but, upon consideration, it must be confessed that if the Jockey Club can do nothing to keep speculation within bounds, and decline to recognize betting transactions as not coming within their province, any suggestion would be fruitless having for its basis an attempt to regulate one of the wildest passions of mankind, by the enactment of laws which must needs be unwritten. And whereas it is obvious that a self-inflicted grievance presses hardly upon the general body of the public, and that the remedy lies with them, it may not be out of place to help them on their way towards a solution of their difficulty. They must be well aware that, by rushing on indiscriminately, they are not only spoiling their own game, but absolutely encouraging those questionable tactics of which they are the first to complain.

They cannot doubt that milking' manoeuvres would never be attempted without the certainty to the perpetrators of a goodly division of spoil; and they are well aware that as hawks are not in the habit of tearing out each other's eyes, so these predatory gangs do not prey upon one another, but wage common war upon the ignorant and unwary who venture within reach of their toils; and further, they cannot but confess that they are as pigmies in the hands of giants, and can obtain no redress for the squeezing they so often experience. Seeing, therefore, that the spirit of speculation is incapable of control, much more of repression, would it not be for their benefit to dismiss from their minds the chimera of long prices, with their inevitably concomitant dangers, and to rely for the future on shorter prices and post-betting, so that at the least their money may be carried by some animal in the flesh, whose owner, however unscrupulous, may deem it worth his while, now that the tone of the milk market is low, to go straight for the loaves and fishes, and condescend, perhaps, to appreciate a valuable stake at its due importance? Ideas such as these may probably be considered Utopian by those whose knowledge of Turf affairs has led them to despair of better things, and to regard with callous indifference the gradual decadence of the sport of a great people; but it is a scandal that the Turf-of all national. institutions at once the most important and the most prominentshould bear the stigma of reproach which attaches to it, solely for the reason that its devotees will not take the heart to consult their own interests. So eager is the pursuit of racing, and so widely increasing the great betting mania, that bookmaking has become one of the most lucrative and engrossing professions which occupy the brains of the greatest mercantile community in the world. And while we would ascribe all honour due to those whose integrity and high-mindedness has made them men of mark in a calling of which the ascent is slippery, and footing on its summit treacherous and uncertain, we would warn the inexperienced again and again, that the lions in their path are many and watchful, and that it behoves them to be on their guard against that legion of sharpers, whose degrading practices have brought the honourable body of Turf-men into disrepute. They who would be holpen must needs help themselves, and these, in their work of expurgation of Welshers and Turf vermin, will enlist public sympathy and support, and earn a further meed of gratitude from those who, having hitherto relied on their probity, have incurred an extra obligation by the desire to free themselves from the contamination of worthless traders upon honest

names.

We are not so sanguine as to believe that knaves and fools will ever cease out of the land; nor can we be brought to contemplate the possibility of betting operations being so regulated and controlled, as to shut the door effectually against the fraudulent practices which now revel in their impunity; but having pointed out the evil as it now exists, and its antidote, we may venture to hope that some check will be given to the encouragement of evils, which,

like noxious weeds, have sprung up and choked the fair growth of an ancient and deeply-rooted institution. We cannot hope for the advent of a St. Patrick to exterminate the reptiles, whose slimy track has defiled the annals of the Turf; but we can feel and know that the remedy is in the hands of those who suffer, and we can raise the warning cry, if only to scare away one victim from the quicksands of delusion and destruction. The genus plunger' is now, happily, almost extinct, and it is in the power of the speculative community to commence that course of self-defence which constitutes the only check upon the wholesale robberies now perpetrated by organized bodies of schemers upon the hapless public. But of this they may be assured, that as long as their present state of apathy exists there will not be wanting those to profit by their rashness and credulity, and ' where the carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together.' AMPHION.

THE ARABIAN HORSE.

CHAPTER III.-SECTION I.

ON BREEDING.

THE greatest tests of pure breeding are stoutness and endurance, but a high degree of speed ought to accompany them.

It was pointed out in a former work, The Thoroughbred 'Horse,' that the breeding of our horse is imperfect, that he is not descended entirely from pure blood. The racer of the present day has inherited several stains, and is of mixed blood.

Here then is the secret of his being less enduring, less lasting than the Arabian, at least in my opinion.

It is very generally considered that in breeding any stains that exist may be eradicated in eight generations; that in the eighth descent there is not any difference to be detected in form and appearance between the new breed and the pure parent stock. In other words, the pure blood infused into the impure stock will have washed away and obliterated all stains and flaws in eight descents.

There are others who hold a different opinion, and among those the Arabs.

It is impossible,' says Abd-el-Kader, we think, to get a pure race out of a stock the blood of which is impure; on the other hand, it is a well-authenticated fact, it is quite possible to restore to its ' primitive nobleness a breed that has become impoverished, but ' without any taint in its blood. In a word, a race may be restored, 'the degeneracy of which has not been occasioned by any admixture ⚫ of blood.' He also says, 'Look in a horse for speed and bottom: one that has speed alone, and no bottom, must have a blemish in his 'descent; and one that has bottom alone, and no speed, must have some defect, open or concealed.'

The following remarks, by General Daumas, are worthy of the VOL. XVI. NO. 106.

C

greatest attention:In all times the horse has been regarded by peoples and governments as one of the most potent elements of their strength and prosperity. At the present day there is no ' question relating either to rural economy or to the art of war more 'canvassed than that touching the amelioration of the charger. The 'highest authorities of the state, learned societies, agriculturists, the army, everybody, in short, is taken up with it in France, and yet 'we are very far from being agreed upon it. For my own part I 'have never wearied of studying that noble animal, from taste quite as much as from patriotism or professional necessity. I have con'sulted the most esteemed authors and men of great erudition, but I 'confess that it is among the Arabs I have met with the most just and practical appreciation of the subject.'

But allowing the opinion to be correct, that in eight descents impure blood may be obliterated, for the sake of argument, to arrive at the desired result, it is necessary, in each and every generation anterior to the ninth, to return, on the male side, to the original pure blood. Now our horse has not been so bred. I fail to trace any systematic plan of returning to pure Arabian blood for the prescribed period of eight generations. I fail to trace a return to horses of entirely Eastern (or South-eastern blood), as it is commonly called; on the contrary, horses and mares, descendants, indeed, of Eastern stock, but with many stains, have been bred from.

Allowing Eastern blood only to have been sufficient to establish a pure race, the required standard was arrived at in the Childers, and if there really were not mares of equal breeding to have perpetuated the race for eight generations, horses like the Childers, of entirely Eastern blood, should have been selected; but such was not the case. The Childers were put to mares of inferior blood to themselves, and the inferior descendants were bred from on both sides, and the three horses, Eclipse, Herod, and Trumpator, from whom it may be said truly that all modern thoroughbred horses are descended, contained in their veins many strains of mixed and impure blood. Among the daughters of the Darley Arabian was a mare, once the property of Lord Lonsdale, which, like the Childers, was entirely of Eastern blood. There a good opportunity of carrying out the theory was lost; her produce, as will be seen by reference to the Stud Book, was by Bay Bolton, a horse not even altogether of Eastern blood.

On the other hand, if merely Eastern blood were not sufficient, believing the Arabian to be the only pure stock, it would have been necessary to have obtained pure Arabian blood on the male side for eight successive generations to have arrived at the desired result, always supposing the theory to be correct.

But after all this system of breeding is a very unsafe one to rest upon; its being open to question is unsatisfactory; it is opposed in principle to the experience of the Arabs, the most renowned horse breeders in the world, and contrary to the system they practise, and, so far as I can see, has nothing to recommend it.