392 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



" pened to be an exceptional case ; but if of an irritable family, 

 "she would be worse even than a roarer, or a blind one. These 

 "are defects which are apparent in the colt or filly, but the 

 "irritability which interferes with training often leads to the 

 "expenditure of large sums on the faith of private trials, which 

 " are lost from the failure in public, owing to this defect of 

 " nervous system." 



The mare described in the foregoing quotation is a thorough- 

 bred race-horse, intended only, or chiefly, for fast running ; but 

 any farmer who has an eye for horse-flesh, and who will take the 

 pains to examine the form and constitution of the best mares 

 working in his neighbors' teams, will find that, in its general par- 

 ticulars, it applies very well to them. Of course, it is not to be 

 recommended that farmers, who intend that their team mares shall 

 be used for breeding, should purchase only such mares as come 

 up to this description ; but merely that in purchasing, with an in- 

 cidental view to breeding, or, indeed, in purchasing for work 

 alone, there will be a decided advantage in following, as closely 

 as circumstances and prices will allow, the standard herein laid 

 down. Very careful attention in breeding should also be paid 

 to the different forms of unsoundness and bad conformation de- 

 scribed. 



■ It being assumed that the mares from which we are to breed are 

 sound and of good temper and form, — or, at least, that they are 

 not decidedly ill-formed, and that they have no hereditary disease 

 or imperfection, — the great remaining question for the farmer 

 relates to the selection of a stallion. And herein I am decided- 

 ly of the opinion that the common practice of our agricultural 

 neighborhoods is a faulty one. Horse-breeding has so long been 

 almost a science, that several things connected with it have been 

 determined with a good deal of accuracy ; and one of these is, that 

 the preponderance of "blood"* should be on the side of the sire. 



* By "blood" is meant that strain which has descended in direct line from the ani- 

 mals imported, more than a century ago, into England, from Barbary, Arabia, and Tur- 

 key ; an>l which has there been developed, through a long course of training, into a race 

 of greater speed and endurance than even the Arabian horse himself possesse 



