CHOICE OF STALLIONS AND MARES. 33 



the most extensive, though not perhaps the most 

 successful, breeder of thorou":h-bred stock England 

 ever saw. The truth of this supposition, however, 

 has not been confirmed by the experience of the 

 last half century, and much more dependence is 

 now placed on the stallion than on the mare. The 

 racing calendar, indeed, clearly proves the fact. 

 Notwithstanding the prodigious number of very 

 highly bred and equally good mares that are every 

 year put to the horse, it is from such as are put to 

 our very best stallions that the great winners are 

 produced. This can in no other way be accounted 

 for, than by such horses having the faculty of im- 

 parting to their progeny the peculiar external and 

 internal formation absolutely essential to the first- 

 rate race-horse ; or, if the term " blood" be insist- 

 ed upon, that certain innate but not preternatural 

 virtue, peculiarly belonging to some horses but not 

 to others, which, when it meets with no opposition 

 from the mare, or, in the language of the stable, 

 when " the cross nicks'' by the mare admitting of 

 a junction of good shapes, seldom fails in producing 

 a race-horse, in his very best form. It is obvious, 

 then, that owners of racing-studs should not hesi- 

 tate at paying the difterence between the price of 

 a first-rate stallion and an inferior one ; and there 

 is always one of the former to be found, to suit 

 every description of mare. Breeders of all kinds 

 of horses, but of the race-horse above all others, 

 scarcely require to be cautioned against purchasing, 

 or breeding from, mares, or putting them to stal- 

 lions, constitutionally infirm. By " constitutionally 



