4 M Whitehaven Coursing Meeting. s 4 5128 5 T Shrove Tuesday. Bristol Steepler 7 36 29 6 Wash Wednesday. 7 T Ridgway Coursing Meeting. 8 F Bath Steeple Chases. 9 S 7 0 No tide 0 30 7 41 1 0 1 25 150 2 15 [Chase. s 4 55 N SETS afternoon s 4 59 2 10 First Sunday in Lent. s 5 2 410 51 4 50 5 10 11 M r 725 5 Morning. 5 35 5 55 12 T Pembroke Hunt S. C. Lincoln's 5 6 6 0 19 19 T Derby Steeple Chases and Races. r 7 10 13 20 W 21 T Dirleton Coursing Meeting. 22 F Ampthill Coursing Meeting. 23 S 24 Third Suuday in Lent. 25 M Carmarthen Steeple Chases. 26 T Liverpool Races. 27 W Liverpool Grand National s 5 17 12 6 44 0 3510 7 8 1 30 1 50 2 10 2 30 2 45 3 5 3 20 3 35 3 45 4 0 4 15 4 30 43 4 45 5 0 5 15 5 25 5 40 6 0 6 15 6 30 6 50 7 15 s 5 2818 9 31 Morning. Steepler 6 5321 STEEPLE CHASES IN FEBRUARY. 5 Pembroke Hunt .......... 12 | Carmarthen Hunt.......... 25 8 Lincoln................................................. 12 Liverpool Grand National.. 27 Derby Laurencekirk. Forfar......7, 8 | Limerick.....19, 20 22 .... 22 25 20 ....... 27 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. BY THE DRUID. CHAPTER SECOND-BReeding of Hunters. "Ah! who has been in such a scene He'll think of days so dear, And take a cup and drain it up- MORRIS. "Do persuade Meynell to give up the chase: he has been hunting the fox these thirty years, but human glory has its limits." So wrote Sydney Smith to the mistress of Quorn Hall in the days of its greatest glory, with about as much effect as when he preached the sermon "smelling of sulphur" in the training metropolis of the East Riding. Men, whose hearts are with the racer and the starting post, may sicken and tire as their years count up; but the votaries of horn and hound fondly love on to the close" with all the constancy of the turtle-dove. While, however, they agree in this one great essential, it is strange to note how almost every sportsman of experience seems to have a pet theory of his own as to the qualities of a hunter and the precise plan of breeding them-a problem which, year after year, puts to confusion the hoariest spae-wives in paddock lore. Breeding for the turf has in fact become such a mere lottery, that many racing-men trouble themselves very little as to whether a sire is perfect in the points where their mares are deficient; but if they fancy a horse or his running, they take a subscription and leave the rest to Fortune. "Everything can gallop a bit," was an old breeder's confession of faith to us, "with your eight stone seven of saddle and satin on his back; but it's not everything that can check hounds with twelve stone of scarlet!" One of these gentlemen assured us that he could never get the exact cut of a hunter he had set his mind on, till, in despair, he put his short-legged cart mare to a thorough-bred horse. Her first filly foal was laid up in lavender till she was four years old, and then crossed with a thorough-bred, and this union inaugurated a long line of fast weight-carrying hunters, which have been the apple of his eye for years. And on we might go through a perfect bede-roll of breeding specifics, alike plausible and speculative. Ideas of hunters differ so widely that we can only say that one of the worst faults they can acquire is "not to care for falling," and fall back ourselves on the following masterly analysis, which we have received from one of the finest horsemen and judges of the day. "Had I to choose a hunter," he says, "by seeing one point only, it should be his head; for I never knew one with a small clean in telligent face and prominent eyes to be bad. I like his neck also to be muscular, but not heavy; shoulders well back, with long arms; short from the knee to the fetlock; pasterns rather long, but not upright; his feet large and perfect, or all the rest is as leather and prunella.' His back should not be too short, and he should have stout loins and wide hips, and good length from the latter to his hocks, which should be rather turned inwards. Added to this, he should be large round the girth, but whether in depth or width does not much signify, and the higher he is bred, the greater his intelligence and the speedier his recovery from the effects of a hard day.” The great nurseries of English hunters are the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, more especially on the Wolds, and the whole of Lincolnshire. Good hunters are, however, less bred than formerly in the latter county, owing principally to the improved system of cultivation, which has caused much second-rate grass-land to be ploughed up; hence the number of brood-mares is rather limited, and the farmers have to resort to Howden Fair, which is the largest market in the world for unmade hunters and carriage-horses. Hosts of them may be found there each September, picking up four-year-old horses of the former stamp, at prices which once ranged from £80 to £100, but now more generally from £100 to £120. The hunting dealers also attend, not to buy, but to glean information about promising horses; they learn where they go to, and occasionally, if they take a very strong fancy, purchase a contingent interest in some of them. Their new owners aim at keeping them at least a year, but seldom more than two, and they frequently find them a temporary stable-mate at the great Lincoln Fair each April; the latter are expected to produce a profit of 28 to 25 per cent. for their three months' strong keep up to Horncastle, or else they hardly realize their new owners' sole idea of "paying for August." Dealers' payments, we may add, are obliged to be prompt and good, as the farmers are not "discount-men." The chief buyers of carriage horses at Howden Fair are the Messrs. Wimbush, Gray, East, &c., and the most paying colour is a brown or a "Jersey bay.' This class of animal does not come there so much from the county of Durham as formerly, but is principally bred in the neighbourhood of Howden and Holderness. The breeders of Durham horses confine themselves more to Northallerton and Newcastle fairs, which are also the great marts for the Cumberland men. The latter, although they kept the first and second hunter-sire prizes against all comers, with Ravenhill and British Yeoman, and made the other horse-classes considerably less of a dead letter than they had hitherto been, at the last Royal Agricultural Show, breed almost solely for the carriage, and hence it is next to useless to bring a chesnut horse, however fine his points, into the county. When Mr. Richard Ferguson, the owner of Ravenhill (who has been re-christened "Royal Ravenhill," in token of his triumph), introduced a coaching-sire some six-and-thirty years ago, he was assured by his neighbours that the climate was too cold either for pure short-horns or anything in horse's shape, that was more than halfbred, and it was only when he sold a pair of his four-year-old Candidates for £150, which shortly afterwards reached the King's stables for, as it was said at the time, £300, that a contrary conviction dawned on them. Candidate, Bay Chilton, and Grand Turk, who were all "Northern Lights" in their time, had very little blood, but were fine sturdy specimens of a species of Durham or rather Yorkshire coachinghorse, which is now almost entirely superseded by thorough-breds. In size they were perhaps a medium between Magog and Lord Fauconberg, and none of them were certainly up to more weight than Meteor; but perhaps the finest type of a coach-horse we ever saw was a brown one by Screveton. The Yarborough, South Wold, and Burton hunts are the great public schools, where the head, hands, and heels of a legion of " Hard-Riding Dicks" are ever at work (though the meets are not so great as they used to be) for five months of the year, in transforming the raw onehundred-guinea Howdenite into the finished two-hundred-guinea candidate for Horncastle. This fair is, in sooth, the great Lincolnshire Carnival of horse-flesh, and far the largest in England for made-hunters. Sporting foreigners are penetré with its fame, and rush to see it and the sales of blood-yearlings at Doncastere, with as much energy as their agriculturists demand to be led to "de beet-root," the instant they set foot from one of "Ben Revetts" chaises, on their Tiptree shrine. An elderly German Baron, not very long since, assured his English visitor, when they had drunk to the death and memory of their last wild boar, that if now he could "only see Horncastle Fair, he could die happy!" Dealers and foreigners begin to be rife in its neighbourhood about the fifth of August, and there are still some lingerers on the twenty-second. The Welshmen bring nothing now; but the Irish-bred horses, whose buck-fencing qualities were once so distasteful, that no Melton or Pytchley man ever mounted one, without a devout wish from his family that he had made his will, have fairly cut their way through a thicket of prejudice, and are to be found in numbers hardly equal to the demand. The hunting humour of the present day jumps very much with size. Hunting-men, if they can possibly afford it, like to ride with two or three stone in hand; and thus little horses, however clever, and up to ten or eleven stone, do not find ready purchasers as of yore, even among "the light division." The veteran Sir Tatton Sykes has never fallen in with this notion about height, and his friends always expect his pleasant "Too big, Sir! too big!" when he looks over anything much above fifteen two. Charles XII., in his very hey-day, did not please him at all. To show how tastes differ, Mr. Davis, the Queen's huntsman, who is a lighter man and rather taller than Sir Tatton, assured us that he had been carried equally well to his hounds by horses of all heights, from fourteen three to sixteen two; but that from fifteen three to sixteen two was his fancy size. Messrs. Elmore, Anderson, Dyson, &c., once held the sway; but of late years Mr. Collins, of London, has become the largest purchaser of hunters at Horncastle; Messrs. Quartermaine and Cox also buy many first-class ones; and Mr. Murray, of Manchester, generally takes a large string northwards. The Lincolnshire farmers generally get into the habit of doing business with one dealer, and Mr. Collins will buy from sixty to eighty from his friends there during the month, of which the highest class ones range from £160 to £200, and occasionally higher. Many of these do not get to the fair to be sold or delivered as formerly, but are purchased privately and join the main-string at a certain place of rendezvous: after all, scarcely half of them reach his London stables, as he now has a show of them at Newark and Barnet, where both purchasers and brother-dealers attend, to cull. Baron Rothschild has not had very great success with his mares, and his agent purchases at all prices from £80 to £400 out of the best hunting-stables in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and rarely comes to Horncastle. Lord Henry Bentinck has not so far to go for his stud, which generally numbers nearly seventy for his six-days-a-week country, not a few of them of that lengthy short-legged stamp, slow over grass, but great over plough and strong fences, which are gradually becoming so rare. No horses sell so well when they can be found, and their rarity may in a great measure be owing to the fact that blood-horses of this build are generally not successful in the T.Y.C. or "one-mile" races which are now in vogue, and are therefore cut, or sold to the foreigners very early in the day; they are not quick on their legs, and get quite "overset" if they are hurried in the first half-mile, though they have perpetual motion enough to bring back" the majority of horses to them over a T.M.M. or a U.I. course. It has always been a great source of regret to us, that The Ban, who was quite the " Admirable Crichton" of this type of horse, should ever have been sent abroad: Inheritor was cast in another mould, but still a very good model for a hunter sire; Weathergage would have suited lengthy mares to a nicety; and Peep-o'-Day-Boy, in spite of his bad pasterns, was after our own heart, as he had a very perfect and not too lengthy barrel, and presented to the eye that best of all combinations, a big horse on remarkably short legs. " Among hunter-sires in Yorkshire during the present century, Screveton by Highflyer is entitled to a very high place, and the blood of his half-brother Sir Peter Teazle has been as well known in the field as on the turf, and most especially through the Sir Harry Dimsdales. The stock of the latter were much prized in Leicestershire, and their peculiar characteristics of a fine dapple-grey, broad backs, pointed Arab-like heads, and orange-shaped quarters, are still to be traced in the third generation. The Presidents, with their fine brown skins and still finer tempers, have jumped magnificently time out mind; and Camillus, who first spread the stud fame of Hambletonian, was the sire of some rare talent in this line. Orvile, Grey Orvile, Grey Walton, Sandbeck, Emilian, Young Phantom, Cervantes, Catton, Cerberus, &c., have all sent wiry representatives of their name from Yorkshire to Horncastle; and Lincolnshire has not been behindhand with Quicksilver, Hippomenes, Pilgrim, Negociator, Robin Hood, Darnley, and Mandeville. Don Juan, with his strong but somewhat inelegant stock, must not be forgotten; nor Orion, the sire of countless browns with especially broad backs and plain tan-muzzle heads. The Cure, rogue as he ran in the St. Leger, is a great favourite in the North Riding, and his stock invariably catch his finely-chiselled head and fiery eye: in the hunting classes at the last Catterick Horse Show, we find him the favoured sire of the "best colt foal for the field," while President, Voltigeur, and his brother Barnton, were alike honoured in the competition of yearling, two-year-old, and four-year-old "colts or fillies." Cardinal Puff's stock were rather few in number, but his hunters were much liked, and Melbourne's halfbred stock is somewhat coarse and overgrown-a remark which applies to many of his thorough-breds. We do not like the style of the Liverpools we have seen at the cover-side, as they rather partake of his ten |