THE BREEDING OF HUNTERS AND HACKS. 185 



— the butcher gets him thrown in with his next half-score 

 of beasts, or the villag-e apothecary^ on the spur of some 

 hapless moment, is brought to believe that the colt may 

 suit him ! And thus it happens that breeding nags does 

 not pay— with rather less outlay and attention devoted to 

 such a business than one would bestow on a sitting of 

 Cocliin China eggs, or a litter of terrier puppies. 



It may be argued fairly enough, that a farmer does not 

 and cannot make the same wholesale business of breeding 

 hunters and hacks as he does of producing cattle and 

 sheep. Still anything that is worth doing at all is worth 

 doing well, and this might be put yet more emphatically 

 in a pecuniary point of view. There is scarcely an 

 occupier of any position but who has always a goodish 

 animal or two that he jogs round his farm, drives in his 

 dog-cart, or, to say it out, rides with the hounds. Let 

 these, or some of them in continual succession, be mares 

 that from use, age, or accident, get beyond their 

 work, and what then becomes of them 1 Their owner 

 cannot sell them, and he will not kill them- so that 

 almost as a matter of course and necessity he proceeds to 

 breed from them. Let us not stay here to inquire whether 

 they be just the sort for such a purpose ; but let us, as 

 the initiative, follow out the line ot the Society, and show 

 our friend that he should do, in contradistinction to that 

 he too commonly has done. The great improver, then, 

 of his species is the thorough-bred horse ; and as a maxim, 

 if you expect the produce of the half or even three parts 

 bred mare to be worth rearing-, you must put her to a sire 

 who is as pure-bred as Eclipse himself. There may be 

 occasional exceptions ; but these are not to be trusted nor 

 taken as precedents. A country mare crossed by a cock- 

 tail stallion may now and then throw a good hunter ; but 



