FOR PEACE AND WAR. 53 



insufficient limbs, covered with a coarse and long liair, and 

 quite unequal to the effective carrying of such a super- 

 incumbent mass; weight they got, no doubt, but without 

 strength, action, or spirit. For in these instances, as in all 

 others, where there is a sudden attempt made in breeding ; 

 as to size, the effort will be found to end in a colt or filly 

 made without a due proportion of parts, and, therefore, 

 more or less awkward or unAvieldy. If our Government 

 was fully instructed as to the unsettled, indiscriminate, and 

 fatal system — or no system rather — that prevails amongst 

 the Irish farmers who so largely breed horses that enter 

 the ranks of our cavalry; and would investigate this 

 subject through the ample means of information open to it, 

 I think the silent but forcible monitors of facts and figures 

 upon the character and standard of supply now, as com- 

 pared with the past, would be productive, of necessity, of 

 the happiest results. The leaders and law-givers of England 

 are far too prescient and wise to ignore from any cause a 

 great national shame and grievance, calling for the 

 promptest attention and reform. This recent great war 

 on the continent having most fortunately for the future 

 interests of horse-breeding and of the English cavalry 

 opened up a means of absorption for those defective mares 

 that have since the introduction of a new proprietary in 

 Ireland been too largely scattered through the island, bear- 

 ing a most objectionable "bar sinister;" the apropos 

 opportunity should not be allowed to pass without a 

 warning to England not to let slij:) the time for a national 

 effort at regeneration of our general horses at a period that 

 the accident of circumstances and the operations arising 

 therefrom have most fortunately left open for utilization. 

 This indiscriminate mating of unsuitable "crosses" and 

 unguided or ungoverned operations in breeding by Irish 

 farmers must, somehow, be altered, or, the too patent 



