88 HOW TO BREED A HORSE. 



with some one or more faults m symmetry, whicTi are pos 

 itive defects, although only in a secondary degree, and 

 which are, at the same time, counterbalanced by so great a 

 number of positive advantages, excellences and beauties, 

 that he is wise to waive the one defect, striving to remedy 

 it, in view of the other good to be hoped for from the 

 strain. The transmission of external shapes is as yet a 

 mystery, and probably ever will continue so. No one can 

 say whether the stallion or the mare has the greater share 

 in giving structural form or constitutional disposition to 

 the young animal. 



Indeed, there seems reason to believe that there is not 

 any invariable rule on the subject ; but that some dams 

 and some sires possess an extraordinary power of impress- 

 ing their own forms and stamping their own images, ic 

 the greater degree, on the young. The general rule 

 however, and that which it is wise to observe is, that lik( 

 begets like. Therefore the practice should be always, 

 where one decides to breed from a mare slightly defective 

 m one point of symmetry, to select a stallion as excellent 

 as possible in that point ; and if one be resolved for any 

 cause to breed from a stallion of whose blood, or beauty, 

 or performances he is particularly enamored, and that 

 horse be weak in any point or points, to put to him what- 

 ever mare one may have in his stud most excellent where 

 he is weakest ; but in no case, even if it prohibit one from 

 breeding from that horse at all, to put him to a mare 

 w hich is faulty in the same part. 



The second ordinary object of breeding-up is, where 

 mares of some highly valued strain, possessing some degree 

 of pure blood engrafted on an inferior stock, have degen- 

 erated in size, in heiglit, strength and size of bone, to breed 

 them to such horses as shall, without deteriorating their 

 blood, improve them in size and bone. This is a far mor« 



