GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 41 



of this defect has kept pace with the increase of two-year-old 

 racing, especially in early spring, and consequent thereon with 

 the increase of studs breeding for sale. 



This may appear strange, but is easily explained. Kacing 

 at so tender an age requires early developed yearlings ; those 

 stiids, however, can flourish only when keeping that requisite 

 in view, for experience teaches that a yearling which promises 

 to win back his purchase-money within eight or ten months, 

 will command a much higher price than one whose usefulness 

 will i^robalily not begin before his third year. The consequence 

 is that they force their produce like asparagus in a hot-bed, in 

 order to bring them up for sale as big as it is possible to get 

 them. Such only find ready customers, and the assumption by 

 a discriminating public, that all such breeders act on the same 

 principle, more especially those who aflirm the contrary, totally 

 depreciates the less developed yearlings, for the purchaser be- 

 lieves — and generally his surmise is not without justification — 

 that with them also the forcing process has been tried, but tried 

 in vain. Thus, every stud owner breeding for sale is compelled 

 to adopt the pernicious practice, and, in the end, the home 

 breeder will have to follow the fashion. 



That to yearlings, unnaturally forced in their development, 

 the early training brings more danger than to those reared in 

 a natural, and, therefore, more healthy manner — hence smaller 

 and less gross, is self-evident. Their puffed-out organs of 

 respiration especially are afliected by the keen atmosphere in 

 autumn and winter, during which their first training takes 

 place, and, consequently, rendered more prone to inflammation. 

 If the constitutional weakness, from which originates the in- 

 clination to morbid affections of the respiratory organs through 

 irrational rearing is continued from generation to generation, 

 the predisposition to roaring ultimately becomes hereditary. 



Most frequent, naturally, are these symptoms of disorder in 

 descendants from stallions from whom they inherit the attribute 

 of quick growth, for they are the first taken into training. 



It is equally natural that young horses with long necks turn 

 roarers sooner than short-necked ones ; for if through each of 



