THE HOUSE BREEDING. 533 



CHAPTER II. 



THE HORSE BREEDING. 



REEDING of live-stock has for centuries been a subject 

 of vast interest to men engaged in raising horses, cat- 

 tle, sheep, or swine. For the most part, its success has 

 come to but a few gifted men. These few have had intuitions 

 and not scientific laws to guide them. The great law of every 

 animal bringing "forth after his kind" was proclaimed with its 

 creation. Man at an early day modified it by saying "like pro- 

 duces like." As man advanced in knowledge, gained mostly by 

 experience, and the observations of some individual careful ob- 

 server, he gave as a corollary of the old law, " breed from 

 the best." 



These aphorisms represent the fundamental principles of the 

 best modern practice. The trouble all along the line of history 

 is to find a general agreement among the men who own animals 

 as to what is the "best." Men's ideals are subject to the uses 

 to which they put their animals. The men of early ages used 

 horses for purposes of war and ceremony. They used them 

 wholly for the saddle, and the animals were selected for centu- 

 ries which best met the ideals of the warriors for purposes of 

 battle and parade. The nomadic tribes have a kindred use for 

 horses, and add that of the chase. For all these uses we find 

 men in earliest periods of the history of the horse selecting 

 them for speed and endurance. 



Jacob a Color-specialist. Father Jacob is the first 

 breeder on record who bred for color as well as vigor. He showed 

 great shrewdness in his attempts to control the color of the calves 

 in Laban's herd. He is the first color-specialist on record. How 

 well he fixed a type of color, history does not inform us, yet so 



