94 Breeding. 



slack in the loin for their length. Such animals, if of 

 good running families, should not be despised ; and many 

 such have stood their owners in good stead. On the 

 other hand, some good-looking animals have never thrown 

 good stock, because they were only exceptional cases, 

 and their families were of bad running blood on all or 

 most sides. No mare could look much more unlike pro- 

 ducing strong stock than Pocahontas, but being of a 

 family which numbers Selim, Bacchante, Tramp, Web, 

 Orville, Eleanor, and Marmion among its eight members 

 in the third remove, it can scarcely occasion surprise that 

 she should respond to the call of the Baron by producing 

 a Stockwell and a Rataplan. 



In health, the brood mare should be as near perfection 

 as the artificial state of this animal will allow ; at all 

 events, it is the most important point of all ; and in every 

 case the mare should be very carefully examined, with a 

 view to discover what deviations from a natural state have 

 been entailed upon her by her own labours, and what she 

 has inherited from her ancestors. Independently of the 

 consequences of accidents, all deviations from a state of 

 health in the mare may be considered as more or less 

 transmitted to her, because in a thoroughly sound consti- 

 tution, no ordinary treatment such as training consists of 

 will produce disease, and it is only hereditary predis- 

 position which, under this process, entails its appearance. 

 Still, there are positive, comparative, and superlative 

 degrees of objectionable diseases incidental to the brood 

 mare, which should be accepted or refused accordingly. 

 All accidental defects, such as broken knees, dislocated 

 hips, or even " breaks down," may be passed over ; the 

 latter, however, only when the stock from which the mare 

 is descended are famous for standing their work without 

 this frailty of sinew and ligament. Spavins, ring-bones, 

 large splents, side-bones, and, in fact, all bony enlarge- 

 ments, are constitutional defects, and will be almost sure 

 to be perpetuated, more or less, according to the degree 

 in which they exist in the particular case. Curby hocks 

 are also hereditary, and should be avoided ; though many 

 a one much bent at the junction of the os calcis with the 



