82 HORSE-BREEDING FOR FARMERS CHAP. 
hoods spread by the jealous man who travels other 
horses ; before his horse has been on the road a 
week he invariably hears from candid friends all 
sorts of news—that his horse is a roarer, that his 
horse’s pedigree is false, and that he is a bad getter. 
I take it that every stallion commences with this 
character. However charitable the owner of the 
mare, and however careless, the horse is always to 
blame when she is not in foal. And yet there are 
two sides to the question. The country is overrun 
with bad stallions—-unsound brutes that are travelled 
at a low fee, cutting out good sires that have cost 
money, not only from earning an honest living, but 
from paying for their keep. The saying that you 
need not wish to pay off an old score against your 
worst enemy better than by giving him a stallion to 
travel has too much truth init. Farmers themselves 
are much to blame for the existence of so many bad, 
and the absence of good, sires. They too often look 
out for a great prancing stallion loaded with fat and 
having a jaw-breaking name. By encouraging third- 
rate stallions they are doing mischief to the com- 
munity and themselves. No economy is worse than 
to have a decent mare covered by a bad or 
indifferent horse at a fee, say, of 10s.—and a glass of 
gin for the groom—instead of paying 42 or 43, or 
even 45, for a horse that gets valuable stock. What 
is the result to the man who does this? He saves 
30s., more or less, in 1894. In 1895 he has a 
miserable foal, neither a pride nor a pleasure to look 
at, however he may “crack” about it to his neigh- 
bours. Or he has a foal that grows into a roaring 
and spavined, but otherwise good-looking animal ; 
