POOD or HORSKS. 265 



But I shall, nevertheless, claim a right to say, that 

 while a farmer, or any other person, takes care of his 

 horses, he keeps his money together. 



A good cart-horse, sound, and in good condition, will 

 fetch a heap of money any day (we are constantly im- 

 porting cart-horses from Belgium and elsewhere), and 

 were I a farmer I would work my horses easy and feed 

 them well, and in place of turning them out with an 

 empty stomach after a hard day's work, to deteriorate 

 their value, I would place them in roomy stalls or loose 

 hoxes, fill their hellies, and give them a good deep bed 

 of clean straw, and allow them to take their natural 

 and much-desired rest, undisturbed until morning. By 

 adopting this course, and breeding them from young and 

 sound mares, and sires of quality, working the produce 

 easy from three to five years old, and afterwards selling 

 them to the numerous contractors and public companies 

 that are always open to purchase good draught horses, 

 at high prices, I think the breeding of cart-horses might 

 be made a very fruitful source of profit, now too much 

 neglected by the farmers in this country, many of whom 

 work their mongrel-bred horses to death, and the mares 

 to a mass of infirmities, and then breed from them, to 

 transmit and perpetuate the same to their progeny. 



In the breeding of cart-horses, as well as nag horses, 

 great attention is always paid to sires, but too little to- 

 mares. It is lamentable to see the poor old, spavined, 

 broken-winded mares (some of them strained by hard 

 work into a shape more resembling a dromedary than a 



