HORSE-RACING AND BREEDING

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2266, 28 September 1914, Page 4

HORSE-RACING AND BREEDING

The easy passage accorded to Mr. Geo. Hunter's. Gaming Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives last week may no doubt be set down in part to a growing recognition of the desirability and necessity of encouraging the breeding of horses of •a good stamp. The sudden demand for some thousands of horses for the use of the Expeditionary Force made it very clear that the horse stocks of tho Dominion have fallen off as compared _ with former times, and while it is _ impossible meantime to augment existing resources, the possibility that a similar demand may have to bo met in the future furnishes an additional reason for making some effort to preserve from extinction the class of horse which can be used on occasion as a troop horse. That encouragement is necessary hardly calls for argument. Tho motor-car has inyaded preserves once sacred to the horse in a manner that points to his ultimate, total exclusion, and has already led to some lowering of standards. 'This is a matter for unalloyed regret. Apart from considerations of sport and healthy recreation. New Zealand fbr years .to come will require many horses for service in the outlying districts, and the experience of the past few years suggests that, it will be very difficult to maintain-supplies unless the horse-breeder is afforded greater encouragement than at present. Many authorities of standing besides Mr, Hunter have recently emphasised this important necessity, amongst others Mr. J. G. Wilson and bm Walter Buchanan. There is a pretty general agreement that it is a desirable thing to encourage the breeding of horses which will combine a turn for speed with good weight-oa.rrying and staying powers, and that one of the best ways to do it is to provide the stimulus and competition which race meetings adapted to horses of this type "will provide. This is an essential purnose of Mr. Hunter's Bill. The allocation of eight racing days to trotting meetings was.in the nature of a compromise, but whatever may ho thought 1 -, of this aspect of tho Bill, the fifteen additional one-day country race meetings and eight hunt club meetings should- assist to promote tho purpose aimed at; Apart from tho desirability of encouraging-horse-breeding, the country . clubs have had an undoubted grievance ever since the Racing Commission of 1910, in reducing the total annual number of totalisator permits to 250, sacrificed the country clubs for the sake of those.established in the metropolitan centres. _ Even straightout opponents of racing have admitted that the country clubs were unjustly treated as compared with their bigger brethren. Mr. Hunter's Bill will make it possible in some degree to rectify the injustice. Reverting to the question of horse-breeding for ''military purposes, English files just to hand give some idea of the enormous- wastage of horses_ that has taken place already during the present war._ Germany is perhaps feeling the pinch most, but in Paris and London -and other' towns of France and England, cob-horses have been seized'in thousands by the military authorities, and if the present rate of wastage is maintained, then there is every likelihood of a world-famine in horses. ''