BREEDING. 63 



then trot him up to them, and finally let him have them 

 at a slow gallop. 



There are one or two suggestions now being made as to 

 how our army remounts should be supplied. One is that the 

 Government should increase its grant to £50 per head ; and 

 an alternative proposal is that horses wanted for this purpose 

 should be bought up at two years of age, and then allowed 

 to run loose until they are four. Were the latter scheme 

 acted upon, great risk would be run, in the fact that the 

 young ones might very likely injure each other, herded together 

 as they would undoubtedly be, and, by reason of loss from 

 this cause, the survivors might prove rather an expensive pur- 

 chase. At two years of age, too, it would be rather a hard 

 task to give a guess as to whether they would eventually prove 

 quite the stamp for the work for which they would be required. 

 The other idea, that of increasing the price, would seem more 

 feasible, although, of course, that would mean an increase in 

 taxation such as any Government would be chary of accepting. 

 Depressed agriculture, however, would undoubtedly benefit ; 

 and it does seem hard, that in these bad times for our 

 farmers, so much money should be flowing out of the country 

 into foreign coffers to pay for an inferior class of horse. At 

 the present price, our farmers, who have to pay so heavily 

 for their land, cannot afford to breed good animals fit for 

 the purpose ; but were that price slightly raised, I have little 

 doubt but that, in a very few years time, we should be on 

 a far more satisfactory footing in our army than the state 

 of the present "paper" cavalry regiments gives us indica- 

 tions of. 



In the selection of a stallion, it is as well to bear in mind 

 that a foal, in most cases, bears far more outward resemblance 

 to its sire than to its dam. In disposition the rule is generally 

 reversed. Of the many defects which experience has shown 

 to be hereditary, none is more strikingly so than temper. A 

 strange example of this occurred in a horse I once owned, 

 whose temper was sweetness itself until approaching the 

 conclusion of her four-year old season, when, wiihout any 

 apparent reason, she turned a perfect savage. She had been 

 always under my own eye, never ridden by anyone else, and 

 none but a steady, experienced man had had anything to do 

 with looking after her, so I know she had never been teased. 

 &c. This mare's sire was one of the worst-tempered brutes' 



