222 ILLUSTRATED STOCK DOCTOR. 



requires such a shape and make as is well adapted for the particular pur- 

 pose she is intended for ; or if not possessing it herself, she should 

 belong to a family having it. If one can be obtained with these requisites 

 in her own person, so much the more likely Avill she be to produce race- 

 horses ; but if not all, then it is better that she should add as many as 

 possible to the needful framework, without which her office can hardly 

 be well carried out. But with this suitable frame, if she belongs to a 

 family which, as a rule, possesses all the attributes of a race-horse, she 

 may be relied on with some degree of certainty, even though she herself 

 should fail in some of them. Thus, there are many fine roomy mares 

 which have been useless as race-horses from being deficient in the power 

 of some one quarter, either behind or before, or perhaps a little too 

 slack in the loin for their length. Such animals, if of good running fam- 

 ilies, should not be despised ; and many such have stood their owners in 

 good stead. On the other hand, some good-looking animals have never 

 thrown good stock, because they were only exceptional cases, and their 

 families were of bad running blood on all or most sides. No mare could 

 look much more unlike producing strong stock than Pocalionras, but be- 

 ing of a family which numbers Selim, Bacchante, Tramp, Web, Orville, 

 Eleanor, and Marmion among its eight members in the third remove, it 

 can scarcely occasion suprprise that she should respond to the call of the 

 Baron by producing a Stockwell and a Rataplan. 



In health, the brood mare should be as near jjerfection as the artificial 

 state of this animal will allow ; at all events, it is the most important 

 point of all, and in every case the mare should be very carefully exam- 

 ined, with a view to discover what deviations from a natural state have 

 been entailed upon her by her own labors, and what she has inherited 

 from her ancestors. Independently of the consequence of accidents, all 

 deviations from a state of health in the mare may be considered as more 

 or less transmitted to her, because in a thoroughly sound constitution, no 

 ordinary treatment such as training consists of will produce disease, and 

 it is only hereditary predispositions which, under this process, entails its 

 appearance. Still there are positive, comparative, and superlative de- 

 grees of objectionable diseases incidental to the brood mare, which should 

 be accepted or refused accordingly. All accidental defect, such as bro- 

 ken knees, dislocated hips, or even ''breaks down," may be passed over ; 

 the latter, however, only when the stock from which the mare is de- 

 scended are famous for standing their work without this frailty of sinew 

 and ligament. Spavins, ring-bones, large splints, side-bones, and, in 

 fact, all bony enlargements, are constitutional defects, and will be almost 

 sure to be perpetuated, more or less, according to the degree in whieh 



