PREJUDICE AGAINST MARES AS HUNTERS. 77 



spavins, are the result of malconformation of the 

 parts. Granted ; but avoid all such malformation 

 which is quite apparent to the eye, in a breedinfr 

 stud. It may perhaps be carrying this objection 

 too far, were we to say, we would not breed from a 

 mare or horse, which had become groggy or lame in 

 the feet, from diseased navicular joints. Had the 

 feet been more vigorously constituted, perhaps such 

 lameness might not have occurred ; yet it is but 

 too probable that here the predisposing cause may 

 be traced to over-severe treatment, and not to con- 

 stitutional defect. 



We have already expressed a regret at the pre- 

 vailing prejudice against mares as hunters, admit- 

 ting, however, that they are not to be so much 

 depended upon at certain periods as the other sex. 

 Nevertheless, no year passes over our heads that 

 we do not hear of mares eminently distinguishing 

 themselves on the race-course, in the hunting-field, 

 and on the road. Indeed, the majority of the 

 extraordinary feats performed on the road have been 

 performed by mares. As relates to breeding hunt- 

 ers, however, this prejudice against them is most 

 injurious in two ways. First, it takes off so much 

 from the value of a filly, as in few cases to leave 

 the mere cost of breeding and rearing her; and, 

 next, many a mare, which would have proved a 

 capital hunter, had she been tried, and, as is rea- 

 sonable to suppose, a capital brood mare as well, is 

 lost to the hunting world by being sold for harness 

 purposes ; and then, if good, so ruined in constitu- 

 tion as to be totally unfit to breed from. On the 



