90 HOW TO BREED MULES. 



unless it be tlie huge London dray-horse, an animal incapa- 

 ble of working faster than at a foot's jvace, and onlj^ bred 

 in fact for show and ostentation, not for utility. How it 

 is that an animal sprung from the cross of two species, the 

 sire of which is always greatly smaller than the dam, 

 should be larger than either parent, is one of the unex- 

 plained mysteries of breeding ; but the mode in which it 

 has been accomplished is no mysterj^ It is by selecting 

 the very largest and loftiest jacks of the breeds used, in 

 Europe generally, for the saddle, and, in Spain, for the 

 draught of public conveyances and private pleasure car- 

 riages, and breeding from them out of the tallest, largest 

 and most roomy mares that can be procured. That such 

 dams should produce hybrids larger than their sires is in 

 the natural <iourse of things, since — as we have pointed out 

 in our previous papers on horse-breeding — it is the mare, 

 furnishing the matrix of the foal, that gives the size and 

 bone to the progeny. But why such marcs should pro- 

 duce a much larger offspring, to a male infinitely smaller 

 than themselves in stature, than they would bear to a stal- 

 lion of their own race, equal or even superior to themselves 

 in height, is not to be accounted for by any known prin- 

 ciples of physiology. The fact is, however, as stated, and 

 the result is not desirable. For the mule of increased size 

 appears to approach somewhat nearer to the horse in 

 organization, whereas it is desirable that he should ap- 

 proach nearer to the aFS. He is a slower aud more slug- 

 gish animal, than the smaller breed, is less enduring of 

 labor, less capable of toiling under extraordinary tempera- 

 tures of heat — which is one of the admitted points of 

 superiority in the mule over the horse — and, being much 

 heavier in proportion, is apt to sink his small, narrow, com- 

 pressed hoofs far deeper into the ground, where the soil is 

 deep and the roads are sticky and tenacious, while he will 



