NATIONALITY IN HORSES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 964, 27 August 1908, Page 6

NATIONALITY IN HORSES.

It is a nice point, as to which is the national horse of Britain, but according to T. A. Cook in the Cornhill magazine the distinction must be given to the thoroughbred. Other nations can challenge us in harness horses, but the English thoroughbred remains supreme. There is no proof that the thoroughbred has deteriorated. Such horses as St. Simon, Flying Fox, Sceptre and Isinglass were as far in front of Eclipse, Childers, and other giants of old as the latter were superior to the native English stock which flourished before the introduction of Eastern blood. The tendency to-day is to produce sprinters, and not long-distance horses; but races are run at top pace nowadays, and the race for a mile in 1908 probably calls for as great powers of endurance as the slower-run four-mile heats of one hundred and fifty years ago. On the question of the results of change of pasturage on a given strain, Mr. Cook asks why the limestone pastures of New Zealand and Australia did such evident good to descendants of our older stock, and sent them back invigorated and improved by their new surroundings. When modern in-breeding has reached such a pitch that all seventeen runners in Witch Elm’s One Thousand Guineas traced back in four generations to the same sire, it is time to try some such invigorating change again. While every other country that pretends to have an army at all is giving substantial State aid to horse-breeding industries, which will produce horses of general utility, both in war and peace, England, the home of the best horse in the world, does practically nothing. There is a system of public stud farms in France, and substantial assistance is given to breeders by the Government, which sets aside £300,000 annually for the needs of national

hbWe-br’eeding,’ apnft, Xrom Whtclr - given towards the encouragement of breeding racehorses.