HORSES. 197 



conferred on the mare by her first stallion. If this is so — and 

 there is no doubt of it — how careful ought the farmer to be 

 when his mare is about to produce her first colt. The greatest 

 care should be taken that the horse is of unexceptionable blood, 

 for all her colts thereafter will certainly resemble him in some 

 ■way. Every dog breeder knows that if his pure dog-mother 

 has her first litter of pups by a mongrel cur, the purest dog of 

 her own breed will never get a litter from her that will not con- 

 tain one pup, at least, of mongrel character and appearance. 

 Why this is we do not undertake to explain, no more tlian we 

 should undertake to explain why a widow's children by her sec- 

 ond husband are often striking likenesses of her deceased hus- 

 band, or why the infant of two extremely ugly persons will be 

 a beautiful picture, and look like neither of their other children 

 and like neither of themselves ; or why hideous monsters some- 

 times appear to perplex and alarm and sadden the beautiful 

 mother and the handsome and finely moulded father. We do 

 know that frequently, when an ordinary mare has had a colt by 

 a blood stallion, the owner is amazed by finding it full of de- 

 fects. Often if he had inquired he would have found that her 

 first colt was the offspring of a donkey or some poor treacher- 

 ous and defective stud horse. Another thing is to take good 

 healthy mares for breeders. A mare that has been used up, 

 that has expended her energy and vitality in front of the lum- 

 ber cart, will not produce very good colts, although sired by the 

 best of stock. A fine working mare is all right, and fair labor 

 does not injure her as a breeder. But take a mere rack of 

 bones that has staggered and stumbled for years in front of a 

 milk wagon, and you must not expect to raise a valuable colt 

 from such a skeleton. Then, again, the colt when born should 

 be well taken care of. For instance, take two colts from two 

 mares of the same purity, and sired by the same father, and let 

 one shiver out in the cold and storm ; let him have such food 

 as he can pick up among the rocks of a barren pasture, and 

 such only, and let the other be handled about the farm, be fed 

 freely from the stable door, be allowed to gallop in the sunshine, 

 and gambol about the new and sweet pastures, and then after 

 six months or a year compare them. The first will be a miser- 

 able pot-bellied runt, without pluck or beauty, and the other a 

 fat, docile, sturdy and handsome fellow, head and tail erect, full 



