4Si THE CONDITION OF A STALLION. 



niin in the spring, after he had been kept in the highesv 

 condition as a hunter throughout the winter, and the 

 produce, on growing up, proved every way worthy of 

 their sire. When His Royal Highness, as Prince Regent, 

 became seriously engaged in the cares of Government, 

 and therefore relinquished the pleasures of the chase, 

 being desirous to perpetuate the fine qualities of this 

 stock, he ordered the horse to be kept at Windsor foi 

 public covering, provided the mares should be of the 

 first quality ; and in order to insure a sufficient number 

 of these, directed the head groom to keep him exclu- 

 sively for such, and to make no charge, with the ex- 

 ception of the customary groom's-fee of half a guinea 

 each. The groom, anxious to pocket as many half 

 guineas as possible, published His Royal Highness's 

 liberality, and vaunted the qualities of the horse, in order 

 .0 persuade all he could to avail themselves of the 

 benefit. The result was, the horse being kept without 

 his accustomed exercise and in a state of repletion, and 

 serving upward of a hundred mares yearly, that the stock, 

 although tolerably promising in their early age, shot up 

 into lank, weakly, aw^kward, leggy, good-for-nothing 

 creatures, to the entire ruin of the horse's character as a 

 sire — until some gentleman, aware of the caust, took 

 pains to explain it, proving the correctness of their state- 

 ments by reference to the first of the horse's get, produced 

 under a proper system of breeding, and which were then 

 in their prime, and among the best horses in England. 



Almost every observing farmer in this country has 

 lemarked that whenever, within his knowledge, an or- 

 dinary work-horse has, by chance, covered a tolerably 

 good mare, the foal thus produced has, at maturity, 

 almost invariably become a better animal than it was 

 expected to be, and in many cases proved quite superior 

 to the get of the high-priced and highly pampered stal- 



