Excerpt from Horse Breeding Recollections The principal requisite in a good racehorse is soundness, again soundness, and nothing but soundness; and the object of the thoroughbred is to imbue the limbs, the constitution, and the nerves of the half-bred horse with that essential quality, and thereby enhance its capabilities. The thoroughbred can, however, fulfil its mission only pro vided the yearly produce be continually subjected to severe trials in public. The only appropriate test, proved by the experience of two centuries, is the racecourse, although its adversaries oppose it as too one-sided, and propose in its stead others of more or less impracticability. The last strug gle for victory, in which culminates the exertion of the race, results from the co-operation of the intellectual, the physical, and the mechanical qualities of the horse, the development of which combined power is higher and more reliable than any that can be obtained in the same animal by other means. The combination of those three qualities forms the value of the horse destined for fast work: the mechanical, in respect to the outward shape and construction; the physical, as regards the soundness and normal development of the digestive organs and motive power; the intellectual, or the will and the energy to put the other two into motion and persevere to the utmost. The attained speed is not the aim, but only the gauge, of the performance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.