50 BREEDING. 



the cozes as good as a run with thoh ; that chaffs 

 is a much more profitable and healthy food 

 than oaiSy and that an open farm-yard, with 

 a crib of barley or oat straw, during the se- 

 vere frost and snow of a long dreary winter^ 

 are preferable to all other accommodations 

 of food and shelter, as (to make use of his 

 own justification) they are then in the most 

 proper state, '^ a state of nature!' These are 

 the persuasive motives assigned also by those 

 strenuous advocates for general improvement, 

 who barely subsist their mares during the 

 tedious months of gestation, under an idea 

 perfectly coincident with the principles just 

 described, that a mare after having been 

 covered, requires but ^^ little or no keep*' as 

 (vv^ith such contemptible speculators) the act 

 itself is ridiculously supposed to make the 

 mare fat. This is the invariable opinion 

 amons^ the less enliditened class of rustics r 

 and though the act and its consequence may- 

 be justly said to make. the mare big, yet the 

 original remark is certainly too ludicrous^ fpr 

 serious consideration. 



After the necessary introduction of such 

 ©bservation* as are evidently connected witb^^ 



