126 The Book of the Horse. 



from the 1st of October to the ist of May, and fed in meadows in the day-time during the 

 rest of the year. 



The Prussian-bred horse develops late, and is in his prime for military purposes at from 

 seven to fourteen years old. A useful system has recently arisen, under which the richer 

 private horse-breeders buy two-year-olds from their poorer neighbours, and feed them with 

 corn, to be re-sold at three years or three years and a half. This arrangement, the result of 

 German education, solves the difficulty which in France has deterred peasant proprietors 

 from breeding a good class of animal. The imperial army of Germany requires more than 

 eight thousand horses every year in time of peace. 



The best horses come from East Prussia, which has been a horse-breeding country from 

 time immemorial. This race shows a large infusion of Oriental blood, from which it originally 

 descended during the Saracenic invasion of Europe. The Hanoverians and Mecklenburgers 

 are bigger and more powerful than the East Prussians, but, as a matter of course, softer, and 

 less enduring. 



Unlike France, horse-breeding is an important part of rural industry in nearly all parts 

 of the old Prussian monarchy, as well as in some of the provinces annexed after the war of 

 1866. 



The provinces in which this branch of industry is new show extraordinary progress. 

 Half a century ago (1820) in Posen the peasant was a slave bound to the soil. The greatest 

 increase of horse-breeding has taken place in this province. In Westphalia (known chiefly 

 in England for its hogs and hams) nothing has occurred to awaken the rural population from 

 their adherence to the stupid customs of a past generation. " You can have no idea," said 

 a German cavalry officer to the writer, " how difficult it is to teach a peasant, only accustomed 

 to a cow, to groom a horse." In the eastern provinces foreign dealers make large purchases, 

 not only of colts but of brood-mares, to an extent which has recently caused serious alarm. 

 Indeed, in every country of Europe, except Russia, a sort of horse panic arose in 1872 from 

 the same cause — the rivalry of sheep and cattle, and the conversion of grass into plough 

 land. 



As a matter of course, the best horses come from the provinces where there is the least 

 arable agriculture, and the worst from the Rhine provinces, where the French law of inheritance 

 prevails, where properties are divided into such little plots that open air grazing is next to im- 

 possible. Prussia obtained fine breeding-ground for powerful horses when she annexed Hanover 

 and Schleswig-Holstein. 



General Walker, our military attache at the Court of Berlin, tormented himself very 

 unnecessarily to account for the superior endurance of the Prussian troop-horses as compared 

 with our own. A cavalry officer at the head of the imperial studs gave several reasons, one 

 of which was sufficient — viz., the hardy way in which the foals were reared. In his first, " the 

 nearer affinity to pure Arab blood," I have not the least faith. If that were so, the stud-bred 

 horses of India ought to be the best in the world ; the contrary is the fact. What is more 

 enduring, what is so enduring, as a Welsh, Exmoor, or Dartmoor pony .' You can never, in 

 horse-dealers' phrase, " see the bottom of them." Why > Because, like the Prussian cavalry, 

 they have been hardily reared. What is so enduring as a sound thoroughbred pony, that has 

 never been raced, always well-fed, but roughly treated } Our horses, as a rule, are coddled 

 from birth to death. The German cavalry-general justly observed as to our troopers in the 

 prc-practical age — the system has changed of late : " Two drills a week, and an hour's watering 

 order on other days, only tend to relax instead of to brace the constitution of troop-horses." 



