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PRESENT-DAY HORSES NOT DETERIORATING. The light of other days always shines more brilliantly for some of our instructors, and each generation finds someone to lament the nast and exalt the worthies who then flourished, if was so long before Horace set down "laudator temporis acti" as a type enduring through the ages. The. sujKTnrit- of the horses of the preceding generation is a favorite conviction of writers of this turn of mind, and it is easy to find in turf chronicles of fifty years ago the exact repetition of lamentations over the change for the worse that are not uncommon today. Yet there is no good ground for believing other than that the merit and quality of horses of everv hreed are steadily improving. The thoroughbred inav be best compared because of the practical uniformity of the supreme test, that of speed on the .race course. By this standard the progress is up. not down, and horses are improving, not deteriorating. Tracks are faster to a certain extent than 50 years ago, hut not near so much as to account for the dlf ference in the times recorded. It has ltcen said more than once in this column that the turf seems to lie judged by special rules, applying to no othc-form of snort, and here is another confirmation of that assertion. No other sport can be cited in which, under similar circumstances, deterioation would be claimed. As a New Zealand trainer not long ago put it: "I have yet to hear it contended that tinman capable of running a hundred yards in 10 seconds is superior to the man who can do 10 seconds and yet that is the position taken up by many people iu respect of racing. If the horse of 20 years ago was better than the one of today the same line of argument might be carried back still furthpr. Perhaps the present-day race horse may not be as tough as the old-timer, but as a speed machine lie is considerably ahead of him." Francis Nelson in Toronto Globe.
