Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Monday 5 October 1857, page 5


Why army

PUBLISHED DAILY.

"I am In the prose whom anitlomanctodof conscience

to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak, Impugn it whose list."

MONDAY, 6TH OCTOBER, 1857.

THE GREAT MATCH.

J Notwithstanding the expectations of our

Victorian sportsmen, the great championmatch, as well as the two by-matches, I which came off on Saturday, were decide against us. The mare on whose perfor -1 Junee our turfites were willing to press

their claim to supremacy in racing matter J j is evidently inferior to the Sydney horse ; and, whatever may be thought of this a second race, between horses - of les i 1 note-which we believe the Victoria i

horse ought to have won, we must find a better animal than " Alice Haw-thorns," before we try again for the championship of the Australian colonies. We trusted too much to the opinion which generally prevailed, that the Sydney horses had neither strength nor endurance ; but the result of Saturday's racing proved to our own cost that at least one of them was able, not only to beat the best of our horses in a three mile race, but also to come to the post again a winner, beating a fresh horse, after a very short period of rest.

The inter-colonial matches are, as we have seen on this occasion, productive of much general interest, and, when conducted in a fair and generous spirit of rivalry, conduce to good results. They afford an opportunity of forming a correct judgment as to the qualities of the horse stock of each colony, and do far more to stimulate a desire for improvement than the ordinary races, which bring together only the horses from within a limited range of country. Victoria has been settled at a comparatively late period, and the increase in our horse stock has been caused principally by importations and the reception of drafts from New South Wales, so That we can scarcely be said to have a breed of horses of our own. Since our great accession of wealth and population this has been the market for the surplus of the two neighboring colonies, and, having abundance of money wherewith to purchase, we have already collected within our borders much of the most valuable stock from either side of us. The well-bred horses from New South Wales have always been taller and more leggy than the compact Tasmanian horses; still in some of the drafts from the north we used occasionally

to find a fair proportion of weight-carrying colts, particularly among those with the old " Emigrant " blood in their veins. These are now seldom to be met with it is rare to find the union of blood and bone in the same animal.

The unexpected demand for cavalry t horses, to mount the English regiments

suddenly sent to India, has created quite a sensation in Sydney. At a public meeting, held a few days since, to devise means for facilitating the collection of the required number as quickly as possible, it was stated that broken-in horses were not to be had, and that it was even doubtful if a sufficient number of unbroken colts could be got together in time. The country was said to be completely drained of strong horses. Those old enough for work have been purchased each year from the breeders for this market; and, so great is the scarcity supposed to be, that something like an appeal to the patriotism of the stockowners was deemed necessary in this case of emergency. _

_ Looking at it from a public point of view, the great object of horse-racing is the improvement of the general stock of the country, into which an admixture of racing blood so largely enters. To meet our own requirements, we must prepare to raise this kind of stock on an extensive scale and our breeders should, as much as possible, seek to combine size and strength with high blood. The great tendency

of the short races of the present day' is to encourage the rearing of a breed I of weedy animals, forced early to as a sort of precocious maturity, but quite

destitute of the endurance or strength required for the road or bush work of this country. It is not in a spirit of old-fogyism that we look back with regret to the colonial horse of twenty years since-a mixture of the. Cape, Valparaiso, Arab, and English breeds, but with the conviction, almost amounting to a certainty, that nothing like the old stock horse or hackney, able on a pinch to carry his rider a hundred miles in the day, is to be expected from the horses lately inported from England, many of them with a high-sounding pedigrees. These are either flat-sided narrow chested animals, offer-ing little resistance to the atmosphere in their passage through it, and with but little stowage room for a day's provision ; or else, in the case of those few which have spread 1 out and gained substance, more closely re-semble an ungainly giraffe in their outline than the engravings of "Flying Childers" or the Darley Arabian." However it may suit the breeders of racing colts and fillies to bring them forward and sell them at a very early age, we trust that too much will not be sacrificed to this especial interest. For the sake of those who, in their ordinary occupations, have to depend so much on this useful companion and assistant, we hope that our breeders will look more to the union of blood and bone than to this early fleetness, and that before many years are past we may have plenty of horses of our own rearing, able successfully to contend for the championship of the Australian colonies in a three

mile race.