A MARCH FOAL 183 



for was too extreme. We live and learn, and 

 amongst the things which experience teaches us is 

 the practical wisdom of a compromise. I do not 

 retract a single word I have said about a May foal. 

 I shall always think that nature would be best 

 served if we could fix the foaling season no earlier 

 than April. Nevertheless, on the give-and-take 

 principle, I abandon April, and take my final stand 

 on the preceding month — the month that comes in 

 like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Let the age 

 of the foal, then, be taken from March 1. One 

 distinctly beneficial result of having your earliest 

 foal a March foal would be that the change 

 from the present system would make it easier 

 to stint the mares. And the same natural 

 law operating, the service of the sire would 

 prove less of a tax on his procreative powers. The 

 nearer you approach a perfectly natural state of 

 things, in " congress," the better for both parents 

 and offspring. The mare's milk in March, espe- 

 cially in a mild month which has advanced the 

 growth of the grass, will be of a more sustaining 

 quality than milk produced, as one might say, arti- 

 ficially, and it would also possess valuable medicinal 

 qualities. The March foal (I must say in an average 

 season the late March foal) fed by such mother's 

 milk as had been enriched by the tender spring 

 herbage would never present that hide-bound ap- 

 pearance we perceive so frequently in foals produced 

 under the present system. Then, for the sun is 

 daily acquiring increased power in the month in 



