198 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



pression is, but cui bono, if the last statement be 

 correct ? 



A first-class young mare, crippled by an accident 

 in hunting, is the one to fall in with, as you may do 

 occasionally, unless, like Sir Tatton Sykes, you can 

 afford to turn fillies out as they grow up unbridled 

 into the park. It is desirable that the parents be 

 not too old. Mares that have been worked hard 

 when young are apt to disappoint the beginner. 

 Animals, again, that have been fattened often for 

 exhibition, age sooner than others. " The excesses 

 of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with 

 interest about twenty years after date," it has been 

 remarked {Cotton's Lacon) of reasoning man. From 

 this cause involuntarily, for no fault of her own, 

 suffers an aged mare whose constitution has been 

 trifled with in youth, by being alternately strung up 

 and let down. The offspring of such is apt to be 

 small, and to refuse to grow, however well done in 

 youth. It is worth knowing, moreover, that horses 

 bred from an aged couple have frequently an aged 

 look themselves, especially about the eyes, which are 

 sunken. They not unfrequently exhibit also a 

 quantity of grey hairs upon the forehead, even when 

 only a few years old. This is, however, rather a 

 contingency to which the offspring is liable than a 

 certain rule: on no account, then, break with a 

 favourite, nor should either male or female be put 

 aside from the stud so long as the reproductive powers 

 last : for many celebrated horses, as, for instance, 

 Touchstone, have been born of the aged. In this 

 last regard nature is apparently capricious : some old 



