A contemporary of Lord Herbert's wrote practically to the same effect. His name was Burton, and he reached his heyday about the time that Shakespeare's era was drawing to a close. The diatribe he launched against the increasing spread of gambling upon the Turf has probably never been surpassed in vigour. In one of his mildest passages he pronounces horse races to be “the disport of great men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their fortunes.” Shakespeare himself, though rather fond of horses, was hardly less opposed to the practice of heavy betting. His description of a thoroughbred's points is good: “Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrils wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.” It would take long, also it is unnecessary, to describe at length all the horses of which Shakespeare speaks in his plays. According to a recent writer, Oliver's steed, Ferrant d'Espagne, or “Spanish traveller,” has been “bastardised.” What the writer means is, I think, that the horse has been introduced into works of fiction without acknowledgment. Such certainly is the case, and so greatly has the animal been distorted in some instances that only with difficulty is it recognisable. In Shakespeare's time—that is to say during the latter half of the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth centuries—the barbary horse clearly was highly esteemed, for it is referred to frequently in books and memoirs which bear upon that period. Shakespeare speaks several times of roan horses too, as for instance in _I Henry IV._, where we come upon the sentence, “Give the roan horse a drench.” To bay horses he makes allusion in _King Lear_, in _Timon_, and elsewhere, and in _Timon_ he refers also to a team of white horses. These bare allusions make dry reading, but they are instructive and of interest in connection with the story of the part the horse played in British history. More especially is this so when we again bear in mind what has already been stated at length in the introductory note to this book, and that is the enormous extent to which automobilism has increased in this country, and for that matter the world over, since the introduction of the petrol motor, which makes it obvious that the horse's reign must be fast drawing to a close. * * * * *