GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 2 



hardy. The highest inhabited land of Asia, 

 which forms the source of the Granges, the 

 Indus and the Bramapootra a country as rug- 

 ged and bleak as can well be conceived con- 

 tains immense numbers of small, sinewy and 

 agile horses. The extreme regions bounded by 

 the mountains of Siberia on the north, the Sea 

 of Okhotsk on the east, and the Little Altaic 

 Mountains on the west the home of the Kal- 

 mucks ^abound in a tough and hardy race of 

 ponies. 



I have not been able to find an exception to 

 this law of nature in the history of the world. 

 Wherever the horse has existed for centuries 

 on rich, fertile plains, and in a temperate cli- 

 mate, we find him distinguished for size and 

 strength; wherever he has been the inhabitant 

 of inhospitable, mountainous regions he be- 

 comes diminutive and hardy. Of course these 

 results have obtained where the horse is left 

 largely to take care of himself. Man may do 

 much by supplying warm stables and abundant 

 food, and by selection, to counteract the influ- 

 ence of climate, but in spite of his utmost care 

 the tendency will constantly be as Nature has 

 pointed out. Mountainous regions and a rigor- 

 ous climate will produce the smallest, tough- 

 est, hardiest horses (as we have seen in the 

 New England Morgans and the Canadian ponies 

 of our own country), while our rich and fertile 



