282 THE HORSE. 



which have been useless as race-horses from being deficient in 

 the power of some one quarter, either behind or before, or per- 

 haps a little too slack in the loin for their length. Such animals, 

 if of good running families, should not be despised ; and many 

 such have stood their owners in good stead. On the other hand, 

 some good-looking animals have never thrown good stock, be- 

 cause they were only exceptional cases, and their families were 

 of bad running blood on all or most sides. No mare could look 

 much more unlike producing strong stock than Pocahontas, but 

 being of a family which numbers Selim, Bacchante, Tramp, 

 Web, Orville, Eleanor, and Marmion among its eight members 

 in the third remove, it can scarcely occasion surprise that she 

 should respond to the call of the Baron by producing a Stock- 

 well and a Rataplan. 



In health, the brood mare should be as near perfection as 

 the artificial state of this animal will allow ; at all events, it is 

 the most important point of all, and in every case the mare 

 should be very carefully examined, with a view to discover what 

 deviations from a natural state have been entailed upon her by 

 her own labors, and what she has inherited from her ancestors. 

 Independently of the consequence of accidents, all deviations 

 from a state of health in the mare may be considered as more 

 or less transmitted to her, because in a thoroughly sound con- 

 stitution, no ordinary treatment such as training consists of will 

 produce disease, and it is only hereditary predispositions which, 

 under this process, entails its aj^pearance. Still there are posi- 

 tive, comparative, and superlative degrees of objectionable dis- 

 eases incidental to the brood mare, which should be accepted or 

 refused accordingly. All accidental defects, such as broken 

 knees, dislocated hips, or even " breaks down," may be passed 

 over ; the latter, however, only when the stock from which the 

 mare is descended are famous for standing their work without 

 this frailty of sinew and ligament. Spavins, ring-bones, large 

 splents, side-bones, and, in fact, all bony enlargements, are con- 

 stitutional defects, and will be almost sure to be perpetuated, 

 more or less, according to the degree in wliicli they exist in the 

 particular case. Curby hocks are also hereditary, and should 

 be avoided ; though many a one much bent at the junction of 

 the OS Galois with the astragalus is not at all liable to curbs. It 



