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grooming and attendance on such Horses should be most scrupulous, 

 for their health sake, and the more so in proportion to their inability 

 to take exercise. 



Let me be understood to vouch, on long experience, that as the 

 best performances of the Horse, of whatever description, are not to be 

 expected, without the best keep, and the most regular and skilful 

 attendance, the same rule holds to the utmost in the breeding stud, as 

 to the quality of the young stock. A man, either from necessity, 

 ignorance or indolence, conjoins hap-hazard, horse and mare, with 

 no farther solicitude, than to be sure he has committed no blunder as 

 to the sexes; the mare takes her chance upon the heath or waste, living 

 thick in the summer months, upon weak, sour grass, but keeping a long- 

 winter lent upon the roots, the vacuum within her being by good luck 

 perhaps, filled up with bean haulm: foals resulting from this oeconomical 

 system of breeding, as Bracken tells us, were deemed by our grand- 

 fathers in sufficient good case, if in the winter when down, they could 

 get up again of themselves. So nourished and reared, cattle at their 

 maturity, do strict justice to their keeping; they are generally good 

 for nothing, with some very middling exceptions: but this rule, doubt- 

 less, applies most forcibly to sized Horses. Even the offspring of the 

 best-shaped parents, will degenerate upon insufficient nourishment, 

 and the want of a comfortable and genial shelter from the palsying and 

 stunting effects of damps and cold. Good keep and warmth are neces- 

 sary to invigorate the circulation of the animal's blood, to expand his 

 frame, to plump up and enlarge his muscles, to encourage the growth 

 of his bones, and to impart to them that solidity and strength which 

 preserves them in the right line of symmetry. 



The necessity then of the most nourishing provender, more especially 

 in the winter season, for the brood mare, which is expected to produce 

 capital stock, is clearly apparent. The next consideration is the pro- 

 per season in which to put her to the Horse, since the mare in the 

 opinion of that illustrious wonder-monger Aristotle, one the most 

 desirous of the male, will admit him throughout the year. All breed- 

 ers, ancient and modern, and so far as I am informed, all writers, with 

 one exception, declare for the spring. De Grey, who wrote in the 



s 2 reign 



