We need not, thanks to "Nimrod" and other chroniclers of the coaching age, remain content with a vague idea of the number of horses then in use on the roads. It is easy to take a single route and reckon up the stud required to work a coach running thereon. The usual "stage" for a team was from eight to ten miles, and making due provision for rests, accidents, &c., the proprietors estimated the needs of a coach at one horse per mile "one way." Therefore a coach running from London to York, 200 miles, and back, required about 200 horses; from London to Edinburgh, 400 miles, and back, about 400 horses; from London to Exeter, 175 miles, and back, about 175 horses. On roads where the passenger traffic was heavy, coaches were numerous: as many as twenty-five ran daily in the summer during the 'thirties from London to Brighton. The distance by road is about sixty miles, whence it would seem that no fewer than 1,500 horses were used by the coach proprietors on that route alone; probably more, as competition was keen and the speed maintained was hard upon horseflesh. The average working life of a horse in a fast road coach was about four years, according to Nimrod. Hence the coach proprietor found it necessary to renew one fourth of his stud at a cost of from £25 to £45 per head every year. Mr. Chaplin, who owned five "yards" in London in the 'thirties, had upwards of 1,300 horses at work in various coaches on various roads, and would therefore have been obliged to purchase about £11,375 worth of horses every year. When the railway banished the coach from the highroad, which it did with considerable rapidity, these great coaching studs were necessarily given up, and a market for horses of the most useful stamp disappeared. An eminent proprietor gave the qualities required in a road coach-horse for fast work as follows: "First requisite, action; second, sound legs and feet, with power and breeding equal to the nature and length of the ground he will work upon; third, good wind, without which the first and second qualifications will not avail in very fast work for any length of time. The hunter and racer are good or bad, chiefly in proportion to their powers of respiration; and such is the case with the road-coach horse."