produce had every justice done them from their birth till they appeared at the post. Now it is notorious that the reverse is the case with regard to our young stock, whether of the best or the worst pedigree, reared in every part of the colony. The young animals are left to nature generally, till they are nearly two years old. Some may be taken into the stable at eighteen months; but till that time they run at grass, and are starved for half the year. This is the universal system, and it certainly cannot improve the size or the strength of the foals and yearlings. But if stunted in growth, they become hardy to a wonderful degree; and if some of your English trainers could see our best provincial racers standing jammed together as close as they can be packed, without clothing, and often without bedding, in a filthy stable, having no ventilation but the door, and the same horses (often colts of two years old) hurried about long distances from course to course, swimming rivers, and feeding on whatever they can get, yet winning whenever they come, and retaining their condition, they would be astonished not a little. Certainly there is not much polish in the condition; but it answers the purpose, and that is sufficient. And, with reference to military considerations, if your young horses in England destined for the cavalry were less pampered in their youth and after they are taken into service, surely it stands to reason that they would bear roughing it during a campaign far better than can be expected from them at present. Next to the Arabs, the Cape horses were found the most efficient of all the Indian cavalry during the late wars, whenever they were much exposed, and had forced marches to make on short commons; and perhaps some of them may have been carrying the troopers of the 10th Hussars against Cossack squadrons in the Crimea.

[We beg to thank our colonial friend for his very interesting paper, and shall be happy to hear from him again at his leisure. The portrait which accompanied the article was hardly in any way up to the mark, and by no means did justice to the original, so far as we can now remember him.-EDITOR.]

THE VEDETTE.

ENGRAVED BY E. RACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY A. COOPER, R.A.

There has, perhaps, been rather too much said about our cavalry of late to be pleasant for some of us. However ill our horses may be able to stand the great weight put upon them, or the hardships they have to undergo, it is very certain that if they are not fed, the proof of their inefficiency is next to none at all. Hunger is the great subduer of either man or horse, and the majority of our failures, we are inclined to think, may trace to the Commissariat.

Most "horse soldiers" are now sportsmen, but it does not follow that sportsmen should be soldiers, and we shall so not pursue a subject that

to any one, however well informed, must be rather a ticklish one. A well-mounted, well-appointed man is something of a picture at any time, while it could never come more appropriately than just at present. There is no one, either, who could do such a subject more justice than Abraham Cooper, and we are quite willing to leave his handiwork to the verdict of our friends. The Vedette would be hardly out of place anywhere, least of all in a work whose first aim is to encourage those pursuits which tend to keep both man and horse in good heart and high condition.

GOSSIP.

BY OLD GREY.

COCK-FIGHTING. THE CRIMEA.

In the Morning Post of Friday, July 27, 1855, is a telegraphic despatch from the Crimea, dated Sebastopol, July 22, running thus: -General Prince Gortschakoff has sent for the Archbishops of Cherson and Taurida, to excite the religious zeal of the garrison." The holy men are to preach, not the gospel of peace, but the decalogue of destruction. They are to infuriate, by administering to the Russian soldiery the strongest stimuli they can find, the semi-barbarians to a pitch of the most fanatical phrenzy that can debase and brutalize beings in the form of men. But regarding the brutal and blasphemous mission of these Russian bishops merely from a sporting point of view, I ask if this diabolical instigation of mitred miscreaney to foul fighting is not a most atrocious thing? A bishop backing a boxer at a prizefight would excite the astonishment and pious horror, not only of pattern-men, but of everybody else. The Spanish custom of " exciting the religious zeal" of animals at bull-fights is "very shocking," as our sentimentalists say; killing a cat that is a nuisance to you and the whole neighbourhood is, according to law, a crime of some gravity-of course punishable, ay! and punished, too, most rigorously and ridiculously; setting dogs to fight is a vile thing; and cock-fighting (never mind its memories, its pleasant pits, its traditions, its royal favour, royal participation, et cætera) is a great crime, a hideous outrage, a most heinous offence against the refined spirit of the age; and conse quently, as in duty bound, I deprecate now what the highest and the best even of our foremost men, statesmen, and orators, as well as sportsmen, only a few years back, were not ashamed to share and countenance. But filled as I am with pious horror at the bare idea of seeing a main, or even a gamecock, either with or without spurs, I must think that this Russian way of bishoping their bipeds "beats cock-fighting"--beats it out-and-out.

The mention, however, of this princely and episcopal procedure-even for the purpose of a passing comparison with English ways and English sports-is, perhaps, scarcely allowable in pages dedicated to less serious things than protests against Russian atrocities and Russian fighting-which fighting I must say is foul, and be-bishoped-foul at the beginning, and emphatically foul on the battle-field, when the engagement is closing, or is entirely at an end.

THE BAZAAR IN BAKER-STreet.

How changed! How have the mighty fallen! I remember this place when it was a horse-palace. It seems, indeed, but the other day. Tattersall's and Aldridge's put together were nothing to it, for extent of accommodation. I could fill a good many folios with facts about this place, and its strange vicissitudes; but perhaps it would be gossip less pleasing than true. Besides, I am but a plain old countrygentleman, without "the gift of the gab"-without that faculty of fluent talk which flows in a glittering stream of facts, expressed in finished language, and linked together by a string of philosophical reflections as long as that of Harry Dale's, when seated in the stable on SheetAnchor's pail, previously to the "roping" of that celebrity on the Leger course by "the lemon-visaged jockey." Still, however, I don't walk through the world with my eyes quite shut; and many's the summer season I have wandered through London, looking upon its phenomena with the eye of a sportsman, of perhaps a somewhat thoughtful sportsman now. No, it will be best for me to leave the facts alluded to alone; I shall then be safe-safe not to run the risk even of boring anybody with things that, peradventure, no person but myself thinks at all interesting. I will, however, observe-for who can help observing ?-the social see-saw, the up-to-day and down-to-morrow sort of movement always insensibly in operation in our system. While the horse-bazaar, for instance, subsided into a big broker's shop, and showrooms for wax-work (Tussaud's), and into I know not what else besides, the Marquis of Salisbury erected a palace of a place in St. Martin'slane, on the site so well known as " Aldridge's," and where the wellknown and highly respected "Old Fred Mattam" sells, in his uncompromising way, some six or seven thousand horses a year-as many as that, I am told. But amidst the mutations going on, Tattersall's-represented by son and nephew now-maintain their place, which is deservedly a very high as well as a good place. For first-class horses it is, and always has been, a first-class place.

HORSE-DEALERS.-OPINIONS.-FACTS AND PHILOSOPHY.

There is a saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted. And there is also a caution, which dates I have no doubt a century or two back, that you should never have anything to do with a dealer, if you can help it. Is the advice worth anything? Is there any justice in the imputation on the character of the class? I presume there is some foundation for it, as I find it taken for granted by a good many people of average liberality. But my own experiences lie in a diametrically opposite direction. In point of truthfulness and honesty horse