Racing.

Otago Witness, Issue 1340, 4 August 1877, Page 17

Racing.

JUDGING HORSE-FLESH. .The experience of a Bquatters' life, in the great far interior of any part of our Australian continent, teaches a man many important lessons. I will not here pause .to enquire as to how many, or to elucidate the influence, moral and otherwise, of some of these schoolings on the nature of those who make pastoral pursuits their object ; bat there can be no question of one thing, and that is, -that a man in the bush learns to place a full value on, and to-, be a fair judge of, a good horse. He may, or may not, have his mind enlarged by ! his pastoral occupation, and he may, or may not, be made to rise above many of the petty meannesses of a mere town life, but he is in any case almost sure to learn to appreciate a trusty steed. I have been led into making these remarks by having noted how Mr Fisher, the late Mr John Moffatt, and others who had gained experience of pastoral life in New Hollands bush, have been taught | ttaw to pick Borne of the plums out of old j England's pudding, in the shape of purchasing, and cleverly purchasing, too — in the Australian fashion of not paying more than -one can possibly help for anything — such horsea as Fisherman and Tim Whiffler from home, two of the greatest bargains that poor old confiding John Bull was ever swindled out of (using the word in a Pickwickian sense, of course). And if ever we are to get some threemilers who will dispute the palm with * Fisherman's stock, we shall have, I think, to turn to Tim Whiffler for the article. Stockham, Talk of the Hill, Marquis, Ladykirk, and Co., will give us all the speed we require ; Sir Hercules, Tim Whiffler, and Fisherman must supply the staying property in our nags of the future. Some horses are sound in the wind and shaky in the tendons ; others

have tendons of steel, with all that maximum of flexile strength deftly packed in the minimum of apace, which is seen equally in the ankle of a thoroughbred woman (Cerito or Dumilatre, as may be) or in the pastern of a blood-horse ; but these' perfect tendons unhappily are sometimes allied with defective (( pipes" in the horse. But the sire I have named is armed at all points — longs, gullet, ribgirth, and tendons to boot. Tim Whiffler ,i* the very horse, when well mated, to produce wiry gallopers of the Richmond ■tamp and species. ■ =The study of pedigrees insensibly carries u» back to the days of the sires of forty ■years ago, a period which- marks two

' generations, or, at least, a generation and a-half, of- the average life of the blood horse. Forty' years Ago the leading stud horses in England were Pantaloon, Touchstone, Sir Hercules, Voltaire, Glaucus, Dr Syntax, Emilius, Camel, Bay Middleton^ the Colonel, &c Now, all thesa - have passed away, and we have in their 'places Thunderbolt, Saunterer, Rosicrudan, Speculum, -Cathedral, Knight of the ; Garter, Lecturer, Lowlander,Pere Gomez, 'Musket,: Lord Lyon, Hermit, &c, and the cognoscenti at home say that the sires : of 1877 are « very bit as good on the turf - and atihe stud, and as likely to live in history as the heroes of 1837. And so, I respectfully submit, they ought to be, . considering the. money that has now to be - laid out in 'every stage of the business, from the time of the services of the sire i at 100'guineasj down to the putting up of * the jockey, at a thousand to nothing, as ' he leaves the saddling yard.