96 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



to-day. It exists in unknown conditions and obscure 

 relations before it is seen. How much the boy owes to 

 the father, and how much to the mother, and how he 

 came to owe the same, or more, to one than to the 

 other, we do not know. How much nature is shaped 

 in the germ, independent of condition and circum- 

 stance, or how much, on the other hand, circumstance 

 and condition affect the germ, who can say ? We can 

 speculate; we can dogmatize: but, while the created 

 mind is ignorant of the processes of its own creation, 

 life, in its origin and pre-natal conditions, must remain 

 largely a mystery. Before I express my own views, I 

 will put before the reader the following principles of 

 breeding, as published in '' The Horse-Owner's Cyclopae- 

 dia," page 99, and which have been highly indorsed by 

 no less an authority than the late Mr. Herbert (" Frank 

 Forester"). 



The author says, under the head of 



THEORY OF GENERATION, 



"1. The union of the sexes is, in all the higher ani- 

 mals, necessary for reproduction ; the male and female 

 each taking their respective share. 



" 2. The office of the male is to secrete the semen 

 in the testes, and emit it into the uterus of the female, 

 in or near which organ it comes in contact with 

 the ovum of the female, which remains sterile with- 

 out it. 



" 3. The female forms the ovum in the ovary, and at 



