HORSES. 33 



pay in horseflesh. And when your mare has foaled, 

 don't be niggardly about their keep. Then is the 

 time to make a horse of the youngster. Plenty of 

 soft food, ground corn, boiled beans, the sweetest 

 hay, roots, bran, and barley-meal till vetches come ; 

 for you cannot do them too well within reason. I 

 must warn you that forcing a mare for show is apt 

 to spoil her breeding, for that season, at least. 

 Stimulated unnaturally, and that mainly with bean- 

 flour, even if a mare be not too heated to stand 

 to the horse, she is apt after a few weeks or months 

 to throw the foetus, which, often no bigger than an 

 egg, may be found, to your great disappointment, on 

 the meadow where she grazes. To return, however : 

 breed skilfully from mares that you have ascer- 

 tained to throw good colts (there is much in that), 

 do the foals well, and you will have the eye of the 

 dealer's agent upon your farm, and an amply 

 remunerative price in prospect, subject only to those 

 accidents to which all stock and mortal things are 

 liable. 



Breed from brutes, and you must expect a brute, 

 for " like produces like ; " but of this more again. 

 To see the lob-headed, straight-shouldered, weak- 

 loined, sluggish, tucked-up, goose-rumped, flat-sided, 

 cow-hocked stamp with which too many farmers are 

 content, left out too the winter long on marshy 

 ground, you cannot wonder when they tell you that 

 "horse-breeding does not pay." Perhaps the most 

 generally remunerative way is to sell the foal from 

 the mother's side, " a sucker." Of course I mean 

 for the ordinary farmer ; or you must keep it to be 



