THE PUREST BREED OF HORSES 
One of the few breeds of live stock that can properly be called pure is the Kladrub breed of 
horses, produced in Bohemia for the use of the Austrian court on state occasions. 
They 
have been carefully selected and inbred for centuries, and are now considered by the Aus- 
trians to be the finest ‘“‘show’’ horse in the world. Only two colors occur, black and light 
gray. Inbreeding for dozens of generations has done no damage to this breed, despite 
the widespread popular belief that long-continued inbreeding is certain to be injurious. 
The carriage of Kaiser Franz Josef is shown, at the recent Eucharistic Congress in Vienna, 
photographed by Underwood and Underwood. 
merely a matter of chance. There is an 
excellent illustration of this in Hungary, 
with which you may not be familiar. 
“The Nonius breed is one of the most 
important of Hungarian breeds of 
general purpose horses. It is founded 
wholly on one stallion, Nonius, who 
was produced in France more than a 
century ago by mating an English 
halfbred to a Norman mare. In 1815 
the Austrians carried him away as one 
of the prizes of war; he proved to be 
extraordinarily prepotent, in spite of 
his mixed ancestry, and is responsible 
206 
(Fig. 6.) 
for the existence of the valuable breed 
which bears his name today.” 
“And the Europeans are really im- 
proving their stock rapidly, by picking 
out the good blood lines and inbreed- 
ing?’ I inquired. 
“Undoubtedly. In Germany, Aus- 
tria, Holland and the Scandinavian 
countries, the movement has made great 
progress. It had done less in France 
and Great Britain. In general, I sup- 
pose this school of breeding is the 
strongest, where the publications of the 
German Genetic Association are best 
