The Breeding of Hunters and Roadsters 



best, breeding horses of other classes than for 

 agricultural purposes be a difficult specula- 

 tion, as we are ready to admit it is, it surely 

 requires every attention and precaution which 

 prudent and careful management can devise, 

 to render the enterprize a profitable and suc- 

 cessful one. In the manner just indicated, 

 three-fourths of our young horses are reared, 

 and the plethora of so-called brood mares, 

 which are scattered over every rural and 

 suburban district, has led to many a horse 

 being employed as a stallion, which is utterly 

 useless as a sire of hunting stock. If we look 

 back for a series of years, and observe how few 

 really first-class horses have been bred, and 

 remember that the most famous " cracks" 

 of their day are still evincing their quality and 

 virtues — transmitted in some cases through 

 successive generations to the best horses of 

 our Qiwxs. day — and that it is to these renowned 

 ancestors that their powers are due, we may 

 well regret the many names unknown to fame, 

 and horses, whose good looks and appear- 

 ances alone are their recommendation, which, 

 are now-a-days admitted to the harems of 

 even some well-regulated stud. This, then, 

 is one of the greatest evils of the present day 

 — viz., too little attention to the careful and 

 thorough exclusion from the stud of any 

 except faultless animals, as sires and dams. 

 And so long as breeders persist in raising 

 young stock from weedy sires or old worn- 

 out dams, the race of hunters and roadsters 

 in this country must go on deteriorating. 



Another important evil is the low price of 

 service of many stallions, which sometimes 

 induces farmers to give the horse a trial ; and 

 the system of a graduated scale of charge — 

 thorough-bred mares being generally made to 

 pay double the sum asked from half-bred 

 and agricultural dams — is a practice totally at 

 variance with common sense, and ought 

 simply to be reversed. If the owner of any 

 good thorough-bred stallion will allow his 

 horse to serve a heavy, course agricultural 

 mare, he ought to be well paid for his con- 

 descension, and for allowing the pedigree of 

 his horse to be allied with the obscure origin 

 of the ancestry of the mare. Probably the 

 best way, however, to secure well-bred stock 



from the good stallion of a district is to pro- 

 hibit his serving any but hunting mares, and 

 only a limited number of these each season. 

 This will tend to maintain longer unimpaired 

 the vigour and action of the sire, and afford 

 less chance of a sluggish progeny. 



Too much blame cannot be attached to the 

 custom of breeding from old mares. However 

 good in looks the produce of such dams may 

 be, it will invariably be found that they are at 

 the best '' s///gs" and, as a rule, are not 

 enduring. They may go a mile or two 

 well enough, but cannot "stay," and at 

 five or six years old their action fails, and 

 they descend from high promise, so far as 

 appearance goes, into slow, plain-going, third- 

 rate animals. Indeed, too much importance 

 cannot be attached to the brood mare. The 

 part she plays in the reproduction (5f stock of 

 the valuable sort is much higher than many 

 people fancy, and, so far as our opinion is 

 founded on personal experience, the dam 

 exercises a far greater influence for good 

 upon the progeny than the sire ever does. 

 Breeders should therefore observe great care 

 in the selection of the dam ; and the best age 

 to breed from is when the mare has arrived 

 at the age of six or seven years, when her 

 conformation is thoroughly matured and de- 

 veloped, and after vice, or inherent weak- 

 ness, or hereditary disease, if latent, has had 

 time to show itself: for it must be borne in 

 mind that almost all diseases, and perhaps 

 more certainly still all vices, are transmissible 

 from the dam to the progeny. So much is 

 this the case, that, not unfrequently, acquired 

 bad habits, or malformations of the joints, the 

 result of adventitious circumstances, and even 

 vices which one generation has escaped, may 

 be perpetuated and reproduced in young 

 stock. Hence the necessity for a careful re- 

 gard to " pedigree ;" for as in human life we 

 see diseases run in families, and sometimes 

 passing over one generation, reappear in the 

 next, so it is with horses ; and in like man- 

 ner, as we often see family likenesses and 

 resemblances in character transmitted from 

 sire to son, so in the brute creation we may 

 observe conformation and points of similarity 

 in temper and disposition equally truly re- 



