570 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOCPED2A. 



when once describing a brood-mare, can be repeated, when he 

 said : ( Her very step had music in it.' " 



Rev. " Adirondack" Murray, who has attained some notoriety 

 as preacher and writer and breeder of horses, concludes that 

 there is not enough of truth in the Arab maxim to make it a 

 law. Even a casual inspection of his own stables does not 

 strengthen the belief in the saying, " The foal follows the sire." 

 He has " dams whose foals invariably resemble the sire in shape, 

 size, color, style of going, and even in temperament, and these 

 mares are prized by me as almost beyond price, because of this 

 peculiarity. I know beforehand what I shall get. On the other 

 hand, I have two other mares whose colts invariably resemble 

 themselves, or some one of their paternal ancestors." 



Temperament Important. Mr. Murray infers from his 

 observations that " The animal with the strongest vitality marks 

 the foal." " If the dam be most highly organized, then the foal 

 will resemble the dam ; if the sire, then the foal will resemble 

 the sire. This is the law in the human family : If the mother 

 be of nervous, sanguine temperament, and the father lymphatic 

 and sluggish, the child will take after the mother," and vice 

 versa. On this theory the cold-blood mare bred to the thorough- 

 bred horse should drop a foal resembling the horse, but the foals 

 are so unlike the sires in many cases that we can not proclaim 

 a law. Yet, in all the varying products of such breeding we 

 find the old rule of having the male better bred than the female 

 is true, and worthy of close following. It is by this law we 

 have been able to improve all kinds of domestic animals. The 

 sires, as a rule, have been better bred than the rnares, which 

 have come to them, and the improvement of the progeny as a 

 class has been marked in the same degree as the breeding and 

 quality of the sire has exceeded that of the dams. 



Mr. Murray formulates this law, " That the best horse is he 

 who, being good in himself, most surely and closely reproduces 

 himself in the offspring, and to this should be added the words, 

 when bred to the mares of the greatest variety of form and 

 temperament." 



The lessons of the past may lead us to say, with equal cor- 



