20 HINTS TO HOESEMEN ; OE, 



doubts ; and it is to "be made by breeding the lowest 

 animal of the horse kind, as also by causing the pro- 

 duction of the very highest caste. In medio tiitissi- 

 7)1118 ibis, we learnt as boys ; but observation and 

 experience as a man, have taught me that the advice, 

 though good, and safe in a general way, must not in 

 all its phases and bearings be taken au pie de la lettre, 

 and certainly not in the breeding of horses ; for I 

 hold the middle course in such speculations to be, in 

 a usual way, a very bad one. The very lowest of all 

 classes of horses will pay for the breeding ; for 

 instance, the little shelties of Scotland pay a some- 

 thing, so do the ponies who run wild in parts of 

 Windsor, and the Kew, Forests ; for these and others 

 bred in the same way, and in similar places, cost 

 absolutely nothing. In spring, when herbage shoots 

 up, they shoot up also ; and in winter they do in a 

 most miraculous way contrive to keep themselves 

 alive. No doubt some perish ; but as if that which 

 has cost nothing should die, it only entails loss of 

 what it would have brought had it lived ; it is not 

 actual loss of vested money in case of its death. 



