18 The Practical Stud Groom. 



changes " than he would on the same farm divided into ten 

 twenty-acre plots. 



QUALITY THE DESIDERATUM. 



The management of paddocks opens up a very wide 

 subject; a subject, indeed, on which volumes instead of 

 paragraphs, could be, and have been written. If the 

 author has learnt anything during his twenty-five years' 

 experience of stud work, it is that the successful manage- 

 ment of grass land is the most difficult of all the various 

 branches of farming. To treat this subject exhaustively 

 and authoritatively one would need to be a trained botanist, 

 soil analyst and chemist. But a trained stud groom, 

 possessing what has been called "the seeing eye," would 

 be a disgrace to his calling if, after a quarter of a century 

 of practical experience, he had not gleaned some knowledge 

 of what constitutes good and bad pasturage. He might 

 be at a loss for learned and technical terms to explain the 

 causes of certain conditions of things, but his observation 

 would at least have taught him to know the kind of soil 

 horses do best on, and which particular grasses appeal to the 

 equine palate. Horses reared on soils deficient in carbonate 

 of lime, either in the shape of limestone, chalk, or limey 

 clay, do not grow bone of the size, and especially the 

 texture, desirable in aspirants to the highest Turf honours. 

 Then, too, there are grasses, and grasses; it is the quality, 

 and not the quantity that counts. The observant stud 

 groom knows that the rich luxuriant grazing of river 

 bottoms and fen lands are well adapted to the Shire horse, 

 prized in proportion to the weight he can throw into his 

 collar when loads are heavy, and city streets afford but 

 treacherous foothold. He knows equally well, that it is 

 the sweet, crisp, harder grasses of the uplands, with their 



