46 THE HORSE BOOK. 



mare has a better chance to get with foal if she 

 is bred twice within half an hour or thereabouts. 

 The fallacy of this contention is explained fully 

 by the great number of sperm-cells given up by 

 the horse. As there is a vast surplus of them 

 in each service there is assuredly no sense in 

 duplicating their number. In any Case it is a 

 serious tax to make a horse cover twice in thirty 

 minutes and it is a money losing proposition as 

 well. One service at a heat is enough. 



Another notion long in vogue is that the first 

 impregnation influences subsequent offspring ir- 

 respective of parentage. Thus it has been al- 

 leged that if a young mare should be bred to a 

 jack and produce a mule, all her later foals by 

 stallions would have mule marks. Prof. Cossar 

 Ewart's experiments with the Burchell zebra 

 the most brilliantly colored of the equine race 

 and pony mares apparently prove that there is 

 no basis in fact for this theory of telegony, as 

 it is called, and that the first impregnation has 

 nothing to do with those which follow later. 



Close inbreeding is a practice to be shunned 

 in a general way. It is not to be denied that 

 some famous breeders have extensively inbred 

 their stock and so found a plain path to the pro- 

 duction of a few outstanding animals, but in in- 

 breeding as a rule there is concealed a bottom- 

 less abyss of failure. The rare instances where 

 incestuous mating has been practiced and sue- 



