OVERFEEDING THE STOCK HORSE. 79 



kiudly to some sires ; and it is a rule, a rule reverentially 

 obeyed iii my head groom's management, that unless nature 

 plainly, by sympathy, affinity and expression, points to the 

 result, the result shall never be obtained by us. I must 

 allude to this in passing, because it is one of those things that, 

 in our minds, account for so much that is mysterious and 

 inexplicable in any other way : it accounts for so much in the 

 propagation of the human species, in the perpetuation of dis- 

 ordered minds, tendencies and appetites, wants and craving, 

 that can be accounted for in no other manner. He whose 

 name is Love never intended that there should be any prop- 

 agation outside of it. AVherever you find an organization 

 fine enough to follow affinity, there you find an organization 

 that must be jealously and sacredly guarded down at the very 

 root and germ of its propagating connection. The man who 

 thinks of this thing rudely, coarsely, who looks at a horse as 

 merely a brute, merely an animal, devoid of sense, devoid of 

 a fine nerve structure, devoid of fine habits, can never be, in 

 my judgment, a candid student of this subject. An excited 

 nervous condition should be avoided at this delicate period. 



A horse should never be treated as a hog is, as most New 

 England breeders treat him. I can go into stable after stable, 

 and find every horse as fat as if God had not made him for 

 activity, but sluggishness. He made him strung with strong, 

 lively, fibrous muscles, not to be covered with layer upon 

 layer of adipose tissue. One of the great sins of breeding in 

 New England has been the overfeeding of the stock horse, 

 from which cause many have died. My judgment is that 

 "Fearnaught" died because he had been kept like a swine, not 

 like a horse. My judgment is that "Taggart's Abdallah" has 

 been in danger of death for three or four years, because, in 

 order to make a horse that did not weigh a thousand pounds 

 tip ten hundred and fifty, Mr. Taggart has kept him 

 hog fat. I instance these, not in invidious comparison, 

 because, where the rule is the same with all, there can be no 

 invidious comparison. I impeach the rule and fashion from 

 bottom to top. 



There are two extremes of condition in which you should 

 never breed, — where the horse has little exercise, and is kept 

 fat, and where the horse is drawn fine for some great nervous 



