270 INSIST UPON OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUES. 



deficient in safe action, if it were not for the influence brouglit 

 to bear on that qualification by the hunting field. It therefore 

 requires that the breeder who uses the Throughbred horse to 

 produce first-class serviceable animals, should be especially 

 ^r'lacting on these two neglected points, which make such an 

 enormous diiference to the pleasantness and value of any horse 

 but a racer. 



G58. — The Thoroughbred trotting horses of America are 

 better tempers, or they could not be kept so easily at a trot, 

 especially as they are not broken in so young as the English 

 racer, but even with them, low, ugly, unsafe action is preferred, 

 if it helps a horse to do a mile in a second less time than he would 

 do it with good safe action. 



Fortunately in neither case can the desired speed be got without 

 a well directed shoulder blade, so that the mischief is not carried 

 so far as it would otherwise be, and horses with very good, safe 

 action can be selected either from English or American racers — 

 from the '' runners" or the trotters. 



059. — The breeder for general purposes should always be on 

 the look out to correct the defects that are not corrected in 

 racing stock, and should especially remember that a sweet temper 

 is one of the greatest charms that a horse can possess, whatever 

 the present American fashions may say to the contrary it is of 

 infinitely more importance than whether ahorse will require two 

 and a half or three and a half minutes to trot a mile. 



FEEDING. 



GGO. — Xeither the horse nor the mare, kept for breeding 

 purposes, must be unnaturally fed. An undue development of 

 nervous irritability, by highly condensed food, will be fatal to 

 all good results : fatal not only for the time being, but extending 

 indefinitely into the future, as all racing records prove. The 

 powerful nerves must not be kept in a state of excitement, but 

 soothed by cooling, succulent, natural food. If grass fails, give 

 turnips, and use no more corn than will meet the demands of 

 whatever work may be done. You had better underfeed than 

 overfeed the mare, though either would be bad. A horse fattened 



