72 HORSE-BREEDING FOR FARMERS CHAP. 
curious one, that with us the preference is always 
given in the market to geldings over mares. In 
many countries this is not so, and the buyers for 
some foreign Governments prefer mares, not only for 
their future use as brood mares, but because of their 
greater stamina. I myself, where other things are 
equal, always prefer to buy a mare. The best 
hunters I have had have been mares. I fancy they 
have an easier pace, are more facile and quicker, 
stand a long day and thrive better than geldings ; 
and when an accident befalls, you have a good 
brood mare to hand, instead of a horse for the 
kennels or the knacker. The English prejudice 
against mares for all kinds of work, unreasonable 
and absurd as it appears to me, has one advantage— 
the buyer in search of a brood mare can usually pick 
up what he requires at a reasonable outlay. I have 
on more than one occasion been offered the gift of a 
good mare who through some accident has been 
unfitted for work, and any farmer on the look-out 
may almost beg one. 
Probably the majority of farmers who turn their 
attention to horse-breeding for the first time will 
breed cart horses. Let us suppose one of these to 
have two cart mares—all the better if they are 
Shires or Clydesdales. In the midlands and the 
south, probably, it will be more profitable to rear 
Shires ; in the north the demand for Clydesdales is 
large enough in the mining and industrial districts 
to make raising Clydesdales pay equally well. It 
will be well if the mares are not more than three 
years old, and then if either of them proves after 
trial to be a bad breeder or a bad mother, the farmer 
