THE CORNER STONE OF BREEDING 



Premature birth has marked the greatest epochs 

 in history. When Joseph, the carpenter of the vil- 

 lage of Nazareth, was driven with Mary, his wife, 

 by an edict of Augustus, to a weary journey on foot 

 to Bethlehem, and the humble pair arrived at the 

 inn and found it so crowded with strangers that 

 they had to clear a corner in the inn yard for a 

 lodging place, anxiety and fatigue hastened the birth 

 of the Child. " I never felt the full pathos of the 

 scene," writes James Stalker, " till, standing one day 

 in a room of an old inn in the market town of 

 Eisleben, in central Germany, I was told that on 

 that very spot, four centuries ago, amidst the noise 

 of a market day and the bustle of a public house, the 

 wife of a poor miner, Hans Luther, who happened 

 to be there on business, being surprised like Mary, 

 with sudden distress, brought forth in sorrow and 

 poverty the child who was to become Martin Luther, 

 the hero of the Reformation and the maker of mod- 

 ern Europe." 



Flora's foal was not able to compete in the two- 

 year-old division of the Produce Stake, owing to the 

 noisy celebration of village lads, but in escaping 

 early training, the vitality of the colt was pre- 

 served for tasks in other fields, and, as a progenitor 

 of speed, he obtained renown and enriched the 

 world. 



Integrity is the corner stone of the breeding struc- 

 ture. The business transactions of a well-conducted 

 stock farm are as free from deception as the trans- 



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