372 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



little training, would be better, and the owner himself, in show- 

 ing him, would reap the benefit. At the late horse exhibition 

 in Boston, was quite a number of two-year old colts, entirely 

 broken to harness, driven around the track for half a mile, 

 received premiums for trotting, and would never, in any degree, 

 unless over-taxed by improper masters, be harmed. 



The committee regretted exceedingly, to see so many colts 

 oifercd for their inspection with evident marks, even at so early 

 an age, of unsoundness"; showing the carelessness and even the 

 wickedness of the breeder, in rearing colts from spavined or 

 ring-boned mares and stallions. It is too often the case that 

 the farmer, after having obtained the service of the mare for 

 fifteen or twenty years in the hardest of drudgery, thinks that 

 she ought to remunerate him still further by rearing him a colt ; 

 he either does not see, or does not know, that the old mare is 

 spavined, the consequence perhaps of long and faithful service 

 at severe pulling and straining. The colt is foaled ; its owner 

 will not, perchance, immediately witness the effects of his 

 folly ; but when the colt is of sufficient age to be put at work, 

 he will soon show how useless and abominable is the practice of 

 breeding from old and entirely worthless animals. The com- 

 mittee do not wish to be understood that colts thus reared will 

 ahvays be foaled spavined, but that there will be a predisposi- 

 tion to this unsoTindness. Breed from none but young, healthy 

 and sound parents^ and in the brute as well as in the human 

 species, healthy progeny will be the result. Let the mare be 

 raising her family during her youth, while she is most fitted for 

 this duty, arid when old let her rest from having her nature so 

 severely taxed. 



There is no doubt that the farmer, the county arid the Com- 

 monwealth would be benefited, if a law was passed prohibiting 

 the breeding from worthless, and particularly from spavined 

 mares. This committee have been informed by a gentleman 

 who has great interest in this matter, that in his passage through 

 one of the principal streets of our metropolis, he counted no less 

 than fifteen spavined horses out of twenty-five. Is this the right 

 state of things ? Ought this to receive the sanction of any com- 

 munity? Surely not. 



The committee earnestly ask that a classification may be made, 

 and that premiums should be offered for the different kinds of 



