BREEDING OF HORSES. 597 



which is the objective point of breeding. This is admirably sum- 

 med up by " Frank Forrester," in his " Hints to Horse Keepers." 

 He says : 



Now as to what constitutes the value or excellence in all horses. 

 It is indisputably quickness of working power, to move or carry 

 weight, and ability to endure for a length of time; to travel for a 

 distance with the least decrease of pace; to come again to work day 

 after day, week after week and year after year, with undiminished 

 vigor. And it is scarcely needful to say that, under all ordinary 

 circumstances, these conditions are only compatible with the high- 

 est form and the most perfect physical health of the animal. Mal- 

 formation must necessarily detract from power and speed: hered- 

 itary disease or constitutional derangement must necessarily detract 

 from all powers whatever. Under usual circumstances it would 

 hardly be necessary to show that quickness of working, or in other 

 words speed, is necessary to a high degree of excellence in a horse 

 of any stamp or style, and not one iota less for the animal that 

 draws the load or breaks the glebe, than for the riding horse or the 

 pleasure traveler before the light vehicle. But it has of late 

 become the fashion in some quarters to undervalue the advantages of 

 speed, and to deny its utility for other purposes than those of mere 

 amusement; and as a corollary from this assumption, to disparage 

 the effect and deny the advantage of blood, by which is meant 

 descent through the American or English race-horse from the 

 oriental blood of the desert; whether Arabian, Barb, Turk, Persian 

 or Syrian, or a combination of two, or more, or of all live. 



The horse which can plow an acre, while another is plowing 

 half an acre, or that which can carry a load of passengers ten miles 

 while the other is going five independent of all considerations of 

 amusement, taste, or what is generally called fancy is absolutely 

 worth twice as much to his owner as the other. 



What the Breeder Should Seek to Obtain Now the 

 question for the breeder is simply this: By what means is this to be 

 attained? The reply is, by getting the greatest amount of pure 

 blood, compatible with size, weight and power, according to the 

 purpose for which he intends to raise stock, into the animal bred. 

 For not only is it not true that speed alone is the only good thing 

 derivable from blood, but something very nearly the reverse is true. 

 It is very nearly the least good thing. That which the blood horse 

 does possess is, a degree of strength in his bones, sinews and frame 

 at large, utterly out of the common proportion to the size or 

 apparent strength of that frame. The texture, the form and the 

 symmetry of the bones, all in the same bulk and volume possess 

 nearly double or nearly fourfold the elements of endurance and 

 resistance in the blood-horse that they do in the cold-blooded cart- 

 horse. The difference in the form and texture of the sinews and 

 muscles, and the inferior tendency to form flabby, useless flesh is 

 still more in favor of the blood horse. 



