of the blood by being always in the
open air, the kind treatment (preventing bad
temper, which impedes development), have all a
great combined eifect in bringing out the good
qualities of a horse; a cubic inch of the tibia of
a horse so reared, weighs twenty per cent more
than stabled stock.

"I have now a colt out of Test by Touchstone,
dam Sarella by Emilius, got by Chilton
by Cowl, which I offered a few days ago in the
Desert as a present to any Arab who could
catch him. They tried their best, but he ran
right away from them."

Of the fifth experiment, which was entirely
successful, it is needless to speak, seeing that
our supplies from Arabia are entirely cut off.

It has been recommended lately that a depôt
should be formed in Australia for the purpose
of collecting horses suitable for the Indian
service; a very good arrangement indeed for the
fortunate man who obtains the post of
superintendent, but the bad policy of wholly
depending on foreign countries for our horses
seems to be entirely lost sight of. If an
European war were to break out, our communication
with Australia and the Cape would either
be entirely cut off, or would be maintained
with very great danger and expense; besides
which, the writer confidently affirms that
Australian horses are not well adapted to the Indian
climate; they suffer greatly from liver
complaints, even under shelter, and are totally
unfit for exposure. The immense size of the
English thorough-bred gives ample room for
deterioration in height without reducing
below the cavalry standard, and the third or
fourth generation would be a breed of horses
better adapted for India than any it has ever
possessed.

It will be objected that many thorough-breds
annually produced in England are mere weeds.
But in England, weedy mares and stallions are
bred from, in the hope of their producing
something that will be fast enough to win a half-mile
race, with the chance of something better
"turning up." Then, again, the system of
running them at two years old is acknowledged by
most men to be prejudicial to the chance of
obtaining stouter horses. It would not be
absolutely necessary for the Indian government to
breed from weeds, neither would it be necessary
to purchase the best racers England can produce.
There are numbers of thorough-bred English
horses, both stallions and mares, to be procured,
who could carry twice the weight that any
Arab or Australian ever imported into India,
could. Many, again, look more slim and
fragile than the half-bred, but their bone, sinew,
and, above all, their blood, enables them to go
faster, to last longer, to carry as heavy weights
as, and to recover sooner from fatigue than, the
half-bred. Hay and lucern can be produced in
such large quantities in India, and so easily,
that there would be less difficulty in rearing
horses on the hard-fed system than on the other.
A farm of two thousand acres, one thousand
for hay, twenty acres for lucern, and the
remainder for grain, together with six or seven
hundred acres for enclosures for the young
stock to exercise in, would be amply sufficient
to rear five hundred head of horses yearly.
The enclosures for exercise should not be turfed.
The galloping about on hard dry ground would
accustom the hoof (as in the case of the Arab
bred in the Desert) to the kind of soil that it
would ultimately have to travel on.

CLUBS AND CLUB-MEN.

CLUBS are not now what they formerly were.
Like many other things, they have grown grander
and more ostentatious with the progress of
civilisation and the increase of national wealth; but
it may be doubted whether what they have
gained in splendour they have not lost in
sociability and ease. A club now, in the generality of
cases, is a palace, where the soul is dazzled with
gilding, and oppressed by footmen. You pace
through magnificent halls, sit in saloons worthy
of Versailles, and admire yourself in mirrors big
enough to reflect the giant Cormoran from head
to foot. The club has accordingly come to be
regarded more as a piece of mingled convenience
and show than as the scene of social gatherings
and intellectual recreation. It is a hotel for
dining at, a house for smoking in, an address for
letters, a reading-room, a place for appointments,
a centre of political influence; anything rather
than a quiet meeting-ground for equals and
familiars, where ideas may be exchanged over the
supper-table or the pint of wine. A few clubs of
the older fashion still remain, but they are not
likely to become more numerous. In the
eighteenth century—the golden age of clubs—
all this was different. The Addisons and Steeles,
the Johnsons and Goldsmiths, the Garricks and
Reynoldses, had a very snug idea of clubbing.
They did not suffer themselves to freeze or parch
in separate groups scattered about a Great Desert
of velvet-pile carpet, but gathered together in a
room of moderate capacity, where the electric
currents of wit could circulate through the whole
body of members. A few familiar friends sitting
round the same table, meeting on stated
evenings, and breaking up when they liked, gives
one the best idea of club life as it was a
hundred years ago among the literary and artistic
circles.

Clubs are as old as most other good and
pleasant things. Mr. John Timbs, from whose
agreeable volumes on Club Life in London
the facts and anecdotes of this paper are
derived, traces them back to a very early period.
The Greeks had their symposia, the Romans
their confraternities; and probably, if we were
equally well acquainted with the social life of
the Oriental nations of antiquity, we should find
that they also formed convivial brotherhoods,
and met at stated times and places for eating,
drinking, and story-telling. Mention is made of
a " Court de bone Compagnie" in England in the
reign of Henry the Fourth: Occleve, the poet,