“Then like a raven on the wind of night The wild Cassandra flitted far and near, Still crying, ‘Gather, gather for the fight, And brace the helmet on and grasp the spear, For lo, the legions of the night are here!’ So shriek’d the dreadful prophetess divine; But all men mock’d and were of merry cheer; Safe as the Gods they deem’d them, o’er their wine.” But, with the tremendous importance of the end in view, the improvement of the thoroughbred horse, is our sport sufficiently fulfilling that end? That is a question which is indeed a hard one to determine, and one great camp may give its voices to the “Ayes,” and one may roar in unison for “No.” There is one thing, and perhaps only one thing, quite certain. Our horse has increased in size. The fifteen-hands-two of the great winners of a hundred years ago have swollen in their average dimensions somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixteen-two. This may not, however, indicate allround improvement. A good big one, we know, is better than a good little one on the course, but I question if the rule holds good, either in the battle or the hunting-field. Ormonde beat The Bard because he outstrode him down the Epsom hill, but The Bard might have carried his master, with his twelve stone ten, had he had the opportunity, more safely and more speedily to the end of a forty minutes run, than his great conqueror on the race course over the mile and a half of Epsom Downs.