FOR PEACE AND WAR. 



CHAPTER V. 



The majority of our general horses, we all know, are 

 the off-spring of thoroiiglibred sires. The reason of de- 

 generacy, then, becomes apparent enough. The greatest 

 number, in fact a very great majority, of these stallions 

 are not chosen with regard to the indispensable requisites 

 to success in a country sire, namely, soundness, formation, 

 substance, bone, action, as well as pure blood! Without 

 these desiderata, the purest bred animal that can be pro- 

 duced is valueless as a progenitor of general horses, 

 because imperfect form and such acquired defects as the 

 necessities of the trainer's operations engender are, too 

 frequently, transmitted to the offspring. Of those evils, 

 a decrepit frame, " curbs," " roaring," and " contracted feet," 

 most heavily visit posterity; and what more deleterious 

 evils can scourge the general breeder, and punish, im- 

 poverish, and endanger a nation having so much material 

 wealth embarked in horses, and such grave considerations 

 depending upon a full and useful supply of them. 



If we are only sagacious observers of nature's workings 

 and consistent disciples of her rules, it will require nothing 

 beyond an ordinary degree of perspicuity to discover and 

 adopt the best means of nullifying and overcoming the 

 existing and lamentable products from a pernicious system. 



For example, we see a sire with " curby hocks " and 

 contracted feet, the property of a popular owner, in an Irish 



