HOW TO FEED A HOKSE. 123 



mence, before he is born. If his dam, while pregnant of 

 him, be overworked, be under-fed, be neglected, and kept 

 cold or filthy, or allowed to pick up her own subsistance 

 as she may on open fields or commons, the foal must be a 

 a starveling ; and, ten to one, will never attain its full size, 

 or the full possession of its powers. If to neglect be- 

 fore its birth be added neglect of the dam and young crea- 

 ture, both, during its minority ; if they be exposed to cold, 

 to rain, snow, heat, in a word, to the weather and its chan- 

 ges, generally ; if they receive no food, — the dam, but what 

 she can gather from the pasture, and the foal, but the thin 

 and unprofitable milk which the dam can produce from 

 such sustenance, — if they have no comfortable, airy shed 

 to protect them from the scorching suns of summer, no 

 warm stable to shield them from the nipping cold of au- 

 tumnal nights, the foal will be, from the first to the last, 

 but a wretched, stunted, starveling creature ; and will 

 never repay the breeder the expense or pains of rearing 

 him. 



According to the nature, quality and blood of the foal, 

 so should the mare, before and after parturition, and the 

 foal, from the time of its birth, be nurtured, housed and 

 fed. It is not of course to be expected that a cart-mare, 

 in foal to a cart-stallion, a Norman, Canadian, or Cleveland, 

 or Clydesdale, the produce of which expects only to be a 

 cart-horse of improved degree, or, at the best, a heavy 

 carriage-horse, should receive the pains, and have the ex- 

 pense lavished on her which would be expended on a 

 thorough-bred mare, having the blood of twenty genera- 

 tions in her veins, and stinted to a horse inheritor of all 

 the glories of the turf, to the days of its first and noblest 

 champions. Still, it is a truth, that if it be worth the while 

 to breed a beast at all, it is worth the while to breed a 

 good beast, — nay I but the very best beast, if one can, of the 



