"No one who has ever trod or galloped over Newmarket Heath, and inhaled the pure, delicious breeze that sweeps over its expansive, open features in the first spring' or autumn meetings, need be surprised at men loving racing. If health and buoyant spirits are any boon, try the bracing atmosphere of the heath,' it would create an appetite under the very ribs of death, and beats all the 'opathies in a canter.

"The foal that your favourite old mare produced you nearly three years ago, is now as fine a colt as ever looked through a bridle.' You have watched his earliest gambols in the paddock that, with the rustic shed in which he was dropped, so ornamentally flanks your country dwelling; have seen him backed and broke at home, scarcely having lost sight of him a day.

"When rising two, you sent him to that best of trainers, after all (without the remotest wish to detract from the merits of many very able men), John Scott, to be duly prepared for the "two thousand guineas" and the Derby. And, be assured, well will he do his duty to your horse : if man can make him fit, and finish his education, he will do it. Your colt is now rather over fifteen three, of a dark chesnut colour, has fine sloping shoulders, immense arms and gaskins, with powerful, drooping quarters, a splendid back and head, with ample length, and the sweetest temper in the stable.' He has had a taste,' besides, that more than satisfied yourself and the accomplished judge who rode him in the trial-Bill Scott, of pious memory. Who could remain in bed, when this animal, that you have bred and fed and caressed for more than thirty months, is going to take a gallop with the great northern trainer's team of fully fifty horses? The downs may have charms, but down has none for you: your very dreams have had you in the saddle all night, and conclude by landing you in an imaginary jump over some frightful yawning gulf, smack on the floor of your loose box.' Anything but thrown out,' except of your bed, you open your casement and holloa for your hack, as you scrape your grizzly chin; and ere the dews have risen from the short and springy turf, you rattle over it to join the nags at exercise. A dozen pass you in their clothes, taking a bursting gallop, snorting through the fine wold air, and making the ground quake with their bounding hoofs.

"Your colt is complimented by having the lead in the string walking in the hollow, with a lad upon him as neat as a young Brummel in his attire, who sits as if he was in a chair, kicking the good-tempered, sluggish animal harmlessly with both his heels to drive him in his walk. Now he takes a spin of at least four miles, when he requires little driving, be assured, but pulls the lad double in his resolute, lengthy stride. See him anon win the Two Thousand in a trot,' beating a field of fifteen or twenty horses, and then his name in honoured print,' with three to one against him for the Derby, with taken freely added in ominous Italics.

،، Without some guardian angel, who sincerely loves the sport, sleeps in the corn-bin, draws his water, feeds and plates him, you may as well wish your noble colt had ne'er been foaled, as see the price he figures He is to pay for all the yearly wants of scores of the dramatis personæ,' and must be made safe, as they never back horses (except to lose), and cannot refrain from 'potting' him, at the price.

at.

"Now comes the 'casting of the bullet,' to which the scene in Der

6

Freischutz' was angelic simplicity. A conclave of the talent,' as they call themselves, meet to concoct the doom of your beautiful nag. There is the head conspirator, who might he underground, so invisibly he works and moves the hellish machinery. His satellites and coadjutors feel rather a pride and relish in the fiendish parts allotted them, and go about their business with fierce effrontery. Their secret society has everything in its power to gain their ends, from a member in the stable or villanously bribed blacksmith, to the rascally compounder of the deadly powder.

"Of course the pivot upon which all this turns is money. All must be paid; and when you consider the claims to be satisfied-after such a case of poisoning as I have described, when the owner of the horse died from the mental agony he could no longer suffer-you may judge of the ramifications necessary to get the sum together. That was most effectually managed, indeed, to an immense amount; yet the all-powerful Jockey Club dismissed the case, with a mellifluous caution to the gentlemen!' and a sentence of banishment on two of the low small fry' (one of them the convicted jockey), who, though two as unmitigated villains as ever looked through a grating, scarcely got a shilling in the pound of the plunder that flowed into the coffers of not a few of the personæ. Their share was about equal to Mr. Beaumont Smith's, in the hushedup exchequer-bill robbery: nevertheless, he may or may not be in the far-distant land of botanists; whilst the first-rates' in the untoward affair' have still their roving commissions."

ROARERS, WHISTLERS, AND GRUNTERS.

BY HARRY HIEOVER.

"Music hath charms," &c., &c.

This we have been told for ages past, and we want no better corroboration of its truth than the fact that almost every nation has its music. Uncouth and inharmonious as that of some nations is, the pleasantry of sound, as well as that of taste, varies in accordance with the ear or palate; and extraordinary enough some tastes are in both these matters. The roar of the lion has something about it of almost a sublime character; but roaring in the horse brings back the mind at once to the common and grovelling calculation of pounds, shillings, and pence. Whistling from some men almost equals the flageolet; so it may, for all I know, from some horses; but I never heard one without experiencing abhorrence of the sound. Grunting from the pig is, perhaps, agreeable to the poor Irish peasant, who cherishes his porcine companion as the medium through which the rint is to be made.

up; piggy is therefore held as a most important personage. But grunting from the horse places his importance in a most equivocal position, and can never be heard with agreeable feelings by any one, and most certainly not by the owner of the animal.

An article that appeared in the "Old Sporting Magazine," of July last, has induced me to take up my pen on my present subject. Eques, the author of that article, has paid me the very flattering compliment of expressing a wish that I would do so; I cannot, therefore, but feel that courtesy demands my giving such ideas on the subject of roarers, whistlers, and grunters as experience has given rise to. When treating on sound and unsound horses I stated that I in no way contemplated giving any thing like a professional opinion on the causes, nature, or cure of the diseases of the horse; for, however much I may have studied them as an amateur, not being professional, I did not wish to attempt what others could do so much better; though practical experience in using horses might, at least ought to, render me competent to give an opinion on what does or does not materially affect their utility.

Eques observes that I have said but little on the subject of roarers. This is quite correct; and I trust my reason for so doing was a good one. In one of our farces one of the characters remarks: "The Spanish fleet I do not see, because 'tis not in sight." Something like this prevented my saying more than I did about roarers, namely, even professional men have failed to decide on what is the definite cause of roaring. This much we all know, and this is knowing very little-it is either some failing in some of the organs of respiration, or some obstruction in the air passages, or both combined. Where the seat or cause of any disease cannot be fixed upon to a certainty while the animal is alive, there can be no certainty of effecting a cure; in fact, it would be useless to attempt it. But we are still further in the dark respecting the disease in question; for though post mortem examinations of roarers out of number have been made, and though the cause has in many cases been quite apparent, these causes have varied so much that these scientific examinations have only brought this much to light-that roaring proceeds from some one of several causes, or of one, or two, or more of these causes together. But worse than all this, in some cases where such examinations have been made, no apparent cause at all has been found. This sets all ingenuity, physical and anatomical knowledge, at nought. Bronchotomy, or opening the windpipe, has been resorted to; but its results have by no means been found satisfactory. I knew a veterinary surgeon who performed it on a horse, for wheezing, with complete success: here an obstruction was ascertained to exist in a particular part of the windpipe; the operation was performed, the obstruction removed, and the horse, I believe, lastingly cured; at least, I saw him two years afterwards, and he had no return of the complaint. This success set the worthy vet. bronchotomising mad-mad he was considered on most points before, and certainly was so; but after this, if a person only took a roarer into his yard to ask his opinion, unless the owner kept a sharp look out, his horse's throat was cut to a certainty; not, however, to any certainty of a cure, for though in consequence of one case succeeding, many horses were operated upon, and in a case or

two temporary relief was afforded, I heard of several cases where the complaint returned with double force-probably from inflammationand others where, after madly opening the throat, he found nothing but a windpipe in a perfectly healthy state. I need scarcely say, his practice in this department of his profession did not last long.

This same vet. told me, one day, he was going to open a horse's side to see if his lungs were diseased, and invited me, as a treat, to see him operate. Whether he did so or not, I do not know. He told me, a week afterwards, he had done it; and, kill or cure, I think it very likely he had.

What is the origin of roaring, in a general way, it is impossible to say, as it in no way always proceeds from the same cause. If on dissecting those parts of the anatomy that are the seat of the disease, the cause of the roaring was ascertained, it might not be difficult to surmise, or indeed to state to a certainty, what was the origin of the disease that caused the roaring in that particular horse; but even here, except in a very few cases, though we might decide to a certainty as to the origin of the roaring, it might be very difficult to decide on what first brought the cause on. For instance, suppose we found the glottis in a state of disease, and felt convinced that caused the roaring, we could not to a certainty say what produced disease in that part. Frequent pinching the throat, to test the wind by coughing, might produce this; so might a piece of dirt, or even a corn lodging in that part, which is exquisitely sensible, though there is little sensibility in the internal part of the windpipe itself, and therefore the operation of cutting into it is by no means so painful a one as might be imagined.

I have heard many clever men give their opinion that the old practice of elevating horses' heads to an unnatural height by the gaggingrein brought on roaring; and I also heard a very able veterinarian say he was satisfied of the fact. Whether such was or was not the case, is not for me to venture an opinion on; but I will hazard a remark that may possibly lead to an observation or investigation being made that may set the correctness or the incorrectness of this opinion at rest. Doubtless the same idea has suggested itself to others, but I have not heard or seen it promulgated by any one. I now mention it. It is perfectly well known to all men conversant with horses, that where one pony, Galloway, or Hackney, is found to be a roarer, ten times the number of large horses are such. This cannot be accounted for on any physical principle, the anatomy and internal organs and formation of the larger or smaller animal being the same; consequently the one being more subject to any particular disease than the other must arise from the different treatment the two animals undergo, be that treatment what it may, whether it relates to feeding, air, exercise, or work.

I have stated that we seldom find ponies or small horses roarers; in this I am quite certain my assertion will be borne out by most men. I must, however, digress a little here, to mention an anecdote that shows there are no general rules without exceptions to them; and as the anecdote tells against myself, I am free to give it. When residing a few miles from Dublin I wanted a common horse to hack in and out of town in bad weather; I purchased a good-looking little

horse at a fair for twenty pounds. On getting him home I found him one of the most determined vicious savages in the stable I ever had; in short, dangerously so. Not wishing to hazard the life of a servant by looking after such a common wretch, I sent him to a fair the next week, telling my man to sell, or swap, or do anything to get rid of him. On my arrival at the fair I found my man on the look out for me, saying he had found a man willing to give thirteen pounds and a little mule for my cannibal of a horse. I told him to make the swap: he did so, bringing back a very pretty mule. Having finished our business, I took my man up in my gig, he leading the mule by the bridle. Muley trotted along very well, and the noise of the wheels over the hard road prevented my hearing what was going on behind; but on slackening the pace up a hill, my ear caught muley blowing his trumpet with full vigour; in fact he was a rank roarer. To go back to the fair to get rid of him was out of the question; a roaring mule was bad enough, but roars of laughter at my expense would have been worse. I proposed turning the d-1 loose at once for the benefit of the public, but my man more wisely remarked that the brute was worth something to sell. I got him home; and in a day or two a little shopkeeper in the village, who sported a cart and donkey, wanting an animal of a higher grade, and saying he did not care about the roaring, gave me his donkey, cart, and harness for my mule. Now I never examined the donkey more than I did the mule; so I thought I had made a very fair deal. But the first time Jack came under my notice, I found he was not only a roarer also, but broken-winded into the bargain. This was too bad; but I made short work here; a friend close by had a little cry of beagles, in a few hours Jack was in the boiling copper. Verily, friend Hieover, if ever you owned a wide-awake hat, you left it at home on these occasions. My usual good luck, however, in horse affairs brought me out of this: a neighbour had bought a pony for his son, that turned out so restive they could do nothing with him. Now, my neighbour wanted a small cart; so he agreed cheerfully to give me the pony in exchange. I took him; and after I had made him do the work I intended for the black horse, and also broke him to harness, I sold him by auction, at Dyer's, for fourteen pounds.

To return to the subject of large horses being so often roarers, and also to whether improperly bearing them up in any way tends to make them so, there is one circumstance that might lead us to the conclusion that it does. Most carriage-horses are large horses, and such horses always used to be, for appearance sake, severely gagged up. We have now altered this, and they are driven without any bearing-reins; or where they are used, the horse is allowed far more liberty of head. Now the question is, has any one remarked whether, within the last two or three years, the number of roarers among carriage-horses has decreased. If this is the case, it amounts to something like proof that tightened gag-reins did produce roaring. If, on the contrary, the average of roarers among the same class of horses remains as before, the gag has been unjustly accused so far as roaring is concerned.

If any professional man had given a decided and definite explanation of the cause of roaring in any of its stages, I should not venture