596 BREEDING OF HORSES. 



season like a brilliant meteor and then sink into obscurity. It is 

 this perfection of organism that enables the horse to stand up under 

 preparation and training year after year, profiting by his education 

 and improving with age, that makes the really valuable turf horse. 

 It is a quality more valuable than speed, because whatever measure 

 of speed it possesses can be depended upon and improved. These 

 are the considerations that should influence breeders of horses for 

 the turf, and no blind devotion to a particular pedigree, no mere 

 promise of speed in a youngster got by a stallion, should induce 

 us to overlook a prevailing tendency to unsoundness or lack of 

 endurance in his get. Sanders on Horse Breeding. 



How Tendency to Unsoundness is Indicated Tend- 

 ency to unsoundness is not marked in any particular development of 

 the animal economy, but the defect shows itself wherever the strain 

 is greatest from the nature of the work the animal has to perform. 

 Thus, the race-horse becomes a " roarer," or his legs and feet give 

 way. The draft-horse often becomes wind-broken, especially if his 

 wind-pipe is impeded by his head being confined by the bearing 

 rein. The road horse again suffers chiefly in his limbs from hard 

 roads; while the cart horse becomes unsound in his hocks or his feet, 

 the former parts being strained by his severe pulls, and the latter 

 being battered and bruised against the ground from the enormous 

 weight of his carcass. But it is among well-bred horses that 

 unsoundness is most frequent, and in them it may be traced to the 

 constant breeding from sires and dams which have been thrown 

 " out of training " in consequence of a break down. 



Marks of Horses Indicating Predisposition to 

 Disease Horses with narrow chests, upright pasterns, and out- 

 turned toes, have a predisposition to disease of the navicular joints, 

 and those with round legs and small knees to which the tendons 

 are tightly bound are especially subject to strains. A disproportion 

 in the width and length of the leg below the hock shows a predis- 

 position to spavin, and a gambrel joint inclining forward shows a 

 tendency to curbs. Many farm horses, as well as others without 

 much breeding, are remarkable for consuming large quantities of 

 food, for soft and flabby muscular systems, and for round limbs 

 containing an unusual proportion of cellular tissue. These char- 

 acteristics are notoriously hereditary, of which indisputable evi- 

 dence is afforded by their existence in many different individuals of 

 the same stock, and their long continuance even under the best 

 management and most efficient systems of breeding. Such char- 

 acteristics indicate proclivity to certain diseases, as swelled legs, 

 and grease. Where the hock is narrow, a strain of the joint is very 

 apt to result from work which, if the limb wr/ properly propor- 

 tioned, would not be severe. 



How the True Excellence of Horses May be Dis- 

 tinguished In taking up the details of horse-breeding it may 

 be well at the outset to consider what constitutes the excellence 



