THE FARMERS HORSE. 93 



or coach. If he has a superior mare, one of the old Cleveland breed, and 

 puts her to a bony, tlu"ee-fourths-bred horse, or, if he can find one stout 

 and compact enough, a seven-eighths or a thoroughbred one, he will have 

 a fair chance to rear a colt that will amply repay him as a hunter or 

 carriage-horse. 



The mare needs not to be idle while she is breeding. She may be 

 Avorked moderately almost to the period of her foaling, and with benefit 

 rather than otherwise ; nor is there occasion that much of her time should 

 be lost, even while she is suckling. If she is put to horse in June, the 

 foaling time will fall, and the loss of labour will occur, in the most leisure 

 time of the year. 



There are two rocks on which the farmer often strikes — he pays little 

 attention to the kind of mare, and less to the proper nourishment of the 

 foal. It may be laid down as a maxim in breeding, however general may 

 be the prejudice against it, that the value of the foal depends as miicli on 

 the dam as on the sire. The Arabs go farther than this, for no price will 

 buy from them a likely mare of the highest blood ; and they trace back 

 the pedigree of their horses, not through the sire, but the dam. The 

 Greek sporting men held the same opinion, long before the Arab horse 

 Avas known. ' What chance of winning have I ? ' inquired a youth whose 

 horse was about to start on the Olympic course. " Ask the dam of your 

 horse,' was the reply, founded on experience. Bishop Hall, who wrote in 

 the time of James I., intimates that such was the opinion of horsemen at 

 that period. He asks in one of his satires (Lib. iv.), 



dost thou prize 



Thy brute beasts' worth by their dams' qualities ? 

 Say'st thou this eolt shall prove a swift-paced steed, 

 Onely because a Jennet did him breed ? 

 Or say'st thou this same horse shall win the prize, 

 Because his dam was swiftest Tranchefice? 



The farmer, however, too frequently thinks that any mare will do to 

 breed from. If he can find a great prancing stallion, with a high sounding 

 name, and loaded Avith fat, he reckons on having a valuable colt ; and 

 should he fail he attributes the fault to the horse, and not to his own want 

 of judgment. Far more depends on the mare than is dreamed of in his 

 philosophy. 



If he has an undersized, or a blemished, or unsound mare, let him con- 

 tinue to use her on liis farm. She probably did not cost him much, and 

 she will beat any gelding ; but let him not think of breeding from her. A 

 sound mare, with some blood in her, and with most of the good points, will 

 alone answer his purpose. She may bear about her the marks of honest 

 work (the fewer of these, however, the better), but she must not have any 

 disease. There is scarcely a malady to which the horse is subject that is not 

 hereditary. Contracted feet, curb, spavin, roaring, thick wind, blindness, 

 notoriously descend from the sire or dam to the foal. Mr. Roberts, in 

 ' The Veterinarian,' says : — ' Last summer I was asked my opinion of a 

 horse. I approved of his formation with the exception of the hocks, where 

 there happened to be two cui"bs. I was then told his sister was in the 

 same stable : she also had two curbs. KJnowing the sire to be free from 

 these defects, I ehquii-ed about the dam : she likewise had two confirmed 

 curbs. She was at this time running with a foal of hers, two years old, 

 by another horse, and he also had two curbs.' 



The foal should be well taken care of for the first two years. It is bad 

 policy to stint or half-starve the growing colt. 



The colt, whether intended for a hunter or carriage-horse, may be 



