specializing field of competing industrial activity. To this end a 

 good education, tempered by experience is generally recognized the 

 world over to be the greatest factor in giving the individual and the 

 nation that competence and power which will attempt to have all the 

 payable resources of the land work together as one harmonious 

 whole for the welfare of the community at large. 



(d) PRESENT TIME. 



Up to this stage we have, for convenience sake, considered the 

 history of horse-breeding as falling into three periods, or rather 

 discussed it under three different aspects, which were marked by 

 important occurrences. The period covering its origin and steady 

 growth dates from 1652. It comprises the importation of horses 

 from Java, Persia, Arabia, North and South America, the capture 

 of some stallions from Spain and the first importation of English 

 blood horses. It closes in 1820 with the importation of large num- 

 bers of some of the best Thoroughbreds. A new period of very 

 marked development set in and was sadly interfered with by the im- 

 portation of large numbers of a much inferior type of sire in 1870 

 and after, when the period of general deterioration and neglect be- 

 gan and dragged on in spite of the efforts made to suppress it, until 

 the end of the century. 



The Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902) is another occurence that had 

 a great effect on horse-breeding and fittingly divides its history into 

 another period, which runs up to the present time. • 



Had we spoken of a general deterioration of the breed in the 

 preceding generation, we almost had no horse to speak about in the 

 beginning of this one. The sweeping movements made after the 

 first great defeats of the British forces and aiming at the starving 

 out of the Boer forces, had collected troops of brood mares and 

 foals together with large flocks of sheep and other stock and de- 

 stroyed them with machine guns. 



The old Republics naturally bore the brunt of the war al- 

 though the neighboring colonies had a fair show of it too. Statis- 

 tics of pre-war days are very scarce and unreliable, especially in 

 the old Republics. In 1914 the first collection of a complete Census 

 of the agricultural industries of the Union would have been made,"^ 



(95) Cf. Editorial Notes. Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa. 

 No. 6, Vol. ri. 191S. 



51 



