558 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AXD STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



given before, and some general instruction to be given hereafter, 

 that may be valuable to all who raise colts. No one, be he breeder 

 or farmer, can expect to produce valuable horses from inferior and 

 unhealthy and unsound animals. The farmer who would raise 

 a colt or two each year can not aiford to breed from a broken- 

 down weed or cast-off brute that is unfit for any useful work. 



The Kind of Mares for the Farmer. Let the farmer 

 who would make colt-raising profitable see, first, that he is the 

 owner of mares that are sound, and have no hereditary taint. 

 A mare with defective wind, ring-bone, spavin, bad feet, poor 

 eyes, and the like, will be the dam of colts with like defect. 

 Men are deceived often because such ailments do not appear on 

 the colts while young. But the careful observer will find that 

 a colt from a mare with ring-bone, or corbs, or spavin, or defec- 

 tive eyes, will develop these disorders in the majority of cases 

 before they are mature, even though the defects do not appear 

 when young. Like consumption in the human family, it may not 

 appear until the children arrive at maturity, and they are ex- 

 posed to severe labor or the system is taxed by a cold and ex- 

 haustion from toil. 



Inherited Defect. When a disease is inherited it is ever 

 ready to break forth at favorable opportunity, which comes with 

 a cold, or depletion of the system by disease or a long-contin- 

 ued labor. Of one thousand cases of insanity noted in France, 

 fifty-three per cent were hereditary. In the family of Le 

 Compt it is said thirty-seven of his children and grand- 

 children became blind like himself, and the blindness came 

 on at about the age of seventeen or eighteen years. Blind- 

 ness is well known to be hereditary. Lexington was largely 

 used as a getter of thorough-breds, notwithstanding he was 

 blind. The breeder assumed that his colts would riot go 

 blind before they were five years old, and by that time the 

 usefulness of the race-horse has been completed, if put to 

 running at two. Strains of back tendons argues a weak- 

 ness that ought not to be propagated. So with swelling legs, 

 grease, chronic cough, thick wind, and so-on. 



We see here the importance of knowing well not only the 



