STALLIONS, BROOD MARES AND FOALS. 143 

 THE .BROOD MARE. 



The influence of the dam in the transmission 

 of hereditary qualities is, in my opinion, usually 

 very much underestimated, and it is frequently 

 ignored entirely by horse-breeders. Instead of 

 classifying the various "families" of horses with 

 reference to the female ancestry, as is the usual 

 custom with cattle-breeders, the female element 

 in the pedigree of a horse is almost entirely lost 

 sight of, while to the male is given especial 

 prominence. This cannot be other than a seri- 

 ous mistake; and the man who keep a worth- 

 less animal in the breeding stud simply because 

 he cannot sell her will not be able to compete 

 with his neighbor who reserves the very best 

 mares of his raising for breeding purposes, even 

 though they both patronize the same stallion. 

 The mare certainly exercises as potent an in- 

 fluence upon the progeny as the stallion; and 

 while in exceptional cases a very inferior one 

 may produce a good foal, yet if we examine the 

 records of the trotting turf we shall find that in 

 nine cases out of ten, even when the pedigree 

 of the dam is unknown, she was "a great road 

 mare." In fact the more closely I observe the 

 workings of heredity in the human family, as 

 well as in our domesticated animals, the more 

 thoroughly do I become impressed with the 

 overmastering influence of the ancestry in the 

 maternal line. So far as my personal knowl- 



