Breeding Horses in India. 13 



Cavalry, although they may do admirably as remounts 

 for the light Native Cavalry. No journey is too long, 

 » no weather too hot, for a good country-bred, who is 

 unapproachable as a hack or campaigner in the tropics,, 

 so long as he is not over-weighted. The question of 

 producing a permanent breed of weight-carriers is one 

 that the Indian studs and private speculators have tried 

 in vain to solve. The stock must be of Eastern or 

 thoroughbred English parentage if they be required to 

 stand the Indian sun, for no horse of coarse blood is 

 worth a feed of corn for all the work he can do on a 

 tropical day ; hence the difficulty of obtaining bone 

 and substance. 



Horses obey the universal law which ordains that 

 animals introduced into, to them, a new country, tend, 

 after a few generations, to conform to the type peculiar 

 to their species which are natives of that soil. This fact 

 as regards men is fully admitted by human biologists : 

 and so it is with horses. Thoroughbred English dams 

 and sires will produce in India a foal that will be, to a 

 certainty, unmistakable as a country-bred ; while the 

 second or third generation will possess but few European 

 characteristics. I cannot help thinking that of all insane 

 ideas, the maddest is the one which some enthusiasts 



