212 BREEDING 



from the same parents. Champions and cup-winners claim family kin- 

 shijD with cabbers and vanners as the result of these reproductive dis- 

 turbances. 



Of course, discrepancies of this kind are not always referable to the 

 causes alleged. Some are brought about by accident or neglect, in which 

 sickness and indifferent feeding and housing play an important part; but 

 the natural tendency to variation, and to revert to ancestors less improved 

 or of inferior type, is accountable for much of the diversity of size, form, 

 colour, temjierament, and endurance so frequently encountered in the 

 experience of horse-breeders. 



To minimize the risks which must always attend the breeding of 

 animals, and especially the improved races, it should be the aim and 

 object of whoever enters upon the business to procure at the outset some 

 of the best specimens of the variety he wishes to reproduce. 



Outward form, however, is not necessarily the passport to success, 

 but with that must be combined the property of prepotency, or power 

 on the i^art of the breeding-stock to impress their meritorious points, size, 

 form, action, power, quality, &c., upon their offspring. This property, 

 largely possessed by certain strains or families, is but feebly exercised 

 by others. 



The Danegelt strain of Hackneys, the St. Simon strain of Thorough- 

 breds, and the Harold strain of Shires are forcible examples of the foi'mer, 

 while instances of the latter will be jDresent to the mind of all who have 

 watched the stud career of some noted representatives of these varieties. 



It is equally important that this power to impart to the offspring 

 the best qualities of the parent should be as strongly implanted in the 

 dam as it is in the sire, and it should also have existed in the ancestors 

 of both for a succession of generations. 



It will be gathered from the above that individual merit alone cannot 

 be relied upon to perpetuate itself, unless fixed in the individual by a 

 long succession of prepotent ancestors. 



How often do we see in our show-rings horses and mares possessing 

 the most perfect form and action, whose offspring never rise beyond 

 mediocrity, and for the most part hardly reach that. Such animals are 

 usually examples of extreme variation or reversion, whose high standard 

 of excellence ends with the individual instead of being perjDctuated in 

 the race by the force of heredity. 



Good characters to be transmitted to the offspring with reasonable 

 regularity must be strongly inherited by the parents from remote an- 

 cestors. There must be a deep-rooted faculty in the family for reproducing 

 their best traits of character. 



