34 THE HORSE AND ITS DISEASES. 



attentive observation, among horses of every country, 

 from brood mares and colts, to every description, wbetber 

 for the tnrf, field, road, or di^anght. 



Although some of the subject upon which we proceed 

 to treat, may have been slightly mentioned by writers 

 who have gone before us, it is generally known to have 

 been in a superficial and unconnected way, that little 

 information or instruction could be at all gleamed from 

 their endeavours. 



Breeding, though a subject of palpable importance to 

 the improvement of this most useful animal, seems to 

 have received less assistance from literary exertion than 

 any that has ever attracted the time or attention of 

 those naturalists, who have in other respects contributed 

 largely to the advantage of the public. It will come 

 home to the remembrance of every reader, when taking 

 a mental survey of his rural neighbours, amongst whom 

 he will perfectly recollect some one or more so invincibly 

 attached to the merits of a cheap spider-legged stallion, 

 or the virtues of his own ring-bone mare, destitute of 

 judgment, and deaf to remonstrance ; he ranks (in 

 imagination) the produce of a prodigy, even in embiyo, 

 and proceeds year after year increasing the number, 

 without a single addition to the improvement of the 

 species. 



These are the kind of hypothetical breeders that 

 surround us, who calculate doubly in error, without a 

 single reflection upon loss, ridiculously supposing a 

 mare in foal, after delivery, can support her own frame, 

 and that of her offspring, upon less food than any other 

 horse or mare in constant work, and begin breeding 

 under an idea, that it will be attended with little or no 

 expense ; thus, totally inadequate, (or indifferent) to the 

 generating of flesh, blood, and bone, by the effect of 

 nutrition ; they penuriously and inhumanly adopt a kind 

 of temporary poverty, and after a year or two of artificial 

 famine, seem greatly surprised, that air and exercise 

 alone could have not produced a colt of equal size, 



