THE HUNTER. Ill 



blood predominates, the offspring may be a heavy, shapeless 

 thing, fit only for a van. If, however, the mare has been 

 ridden, and if she rides lightly and gives one the idea of being 

 well bred, the chances are in favour of her not throwing back 

 to anything coarse on her own side. When there is a pre- 

 dominance of cart-blood, there is also present, as a rule, a 

 heavy action and a general kind of clumsiness which can be 

 detected by any one in the habit of riding well-bred horses. 

 The texture of the coat, too, is sometimes another guide to 

 the mare's fitness to become a brood-mare. 



Strength she must have, in the form of both bone and 

 muscle ; and she should not be less than I5hands 2^in. in 

 height, nor should she exceed i6hands lin. In this, as in 

 other matters, the mean is best ; and perhaps i5hands 3in. is 

 about the best height for a brood mare. At the same time, 

 although size generally means power, it does not follow that 

 a tall horse is necessarily up to weight a self-evident proposi- 

 tion, yet one which a good many breeders do not appear to 

 have grasped. There was a good deal of sense in the remark 

 of the old master of fox hounds who declared that the " height 

 of a hound had nothing to do with his size." This is true of 

 horses to a certain extent ; but as we presently propose to 

 show, a certain amount of height is as necessary in a horse as 

 it is in a hound. 



To return to the brood mare, however. Various experi- 

 ments have been tried. With the hope of combining strength 

 with fashion, thoroughbreds have been crossed with heavy cart 

 mares, and the fillies so produced have been again put to the 

 blood sire, and so on ; but the result has scarcely been satis- 

 factory, and after the second cross the progeny has come out 

 in all sorts of shapes. Others have tried the clean-legged 

 cart mare, with better results. In former days, when the 

 breeding of hunters was at its best in Ireland, the dams of the 

 hunters were almost invariably the clean-legged cart mares of 

 the country, for five and thirty or forty years ago hairy heels 

 were practically unknown in Ireland. Then by degrees the 



