]60 Cross-Breeding in Horses. 



spring, and considering that the temper, nervous system, vital 

 powers, and constitution, usually follow the dam, if the question 

 be put, " Given a certain amount of breeding, which side 

 would you prefer it to come from ? " we unhesitatingly say, if 

 it cannot be had from both sides, by all means let us have 

 it from that of the dam, that her courage, nervous system, and 

 vital powers may be, if possible, joined with the great bone and 

 sinew of the coarser sire. If this system were more frequently 

 pursued, we might breed weight-carrying horses from well-bred 

 though rather light mares, and sometimes even from the best of 

 the three and four year old mares cast out of the racing stable as 

 not being good enough. By such means our cavalry would be 

 far better mounted than at present, and we might, without 

 difficulty, retain just as much breed as is requisite and desirable.* 

 1 do not, however, recommend such violent crosses as that of 

 the cart-stallion with the thorough-bred mare, though not un- 

 frequently successful ; or the reverse case, which, with a few 

 noted exceptions, produces more failures. 



As examples are always more telling than precepts, I propose 

 to adduce a few instances of successful breeding with half-bred 

 horses and well-ljred marcs. 



To begin with my own experience. I rode a mare for some 

 twelve years without her making a mistake ; she was good in all 

 her paces, a fair hunter, an excellent jumper, and a capital hack. 

 She was bred by my father out of a threeparts-bred mare (a 

 good hunter) by a voung half-bred horse, pedigree unknown or 

 forgotten. Her dam afterwards bred three other colts by 

 thorough-bred sires, none of which proved of any value. They 

 could not carry weight, and none of them paid the expense of 

 breeding. 



2. A rather heavy but active and useful cart-mare, belonging 

 to the same owner, bred two colts by thorough-ljred horses, neither 

 of which repaid expenses : they had the bodies of the dam and 

 the legs of their sires. 



3. One of my friends had, some years since, a splendid trotting 

 mare that he justly regarded as a pearl of great price, for she had 



* An inspection of our cavalry regiments will strikingly illustrate the evils 

 of the present system. I had an opportunity a twelvemonth since of looking 

 over a rather large number of cast cavalry-horses offered for sale by auction in 

 a garrison town, and found that nineteen out of twenty were extremely faulty. 

 In most, although the carcasses were sufficient, the legs were totally unfit to carry 

 the weight a cavalry horse is called upon to sustain. Crooked legs, weak 

 sinews, deficient bone, small joints, sickle hocks, the evident result of the union 

 of the two bodies of a thorough-bred horse and a coarse or cart mare, was 

 almost the universal rule; and they presented a strong contrast to the animals 

 that in my experience used to be cast some thirty years ago when half-bred stallions 

 were far more numerous than at present, and horses were bred from parents pos- 

 sessing on both sides the qualificatious sought to be perpetuated. 



