136 



OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



e \- e r )- m o u n t e d Swiss 

 soldier supplied his own 

 horse. Nothing remains of 

 this custom but the fact 

 that each man in the ca\'- 

 alry service may become 

 the possessor of his horse 

 on certain conditions and 

 b\' pa\'ing a certain sum ; 

 also he may do what he 

 likes with the animal when 

 he is not in service. In case 

 of a call to active service 

 he must bring his horse 

 (which has, meantime, been 

 annually inspected) until 

 the tenth year, when the 

 animal becomes his exclu- 

 sive property. It would be 

 difficult to cite a better ex- 

 ample of Swiss democracy 

 and individualism. 



Spain has a cavalry of 

 ten thousand horses, the 

 artillery and the transpor- 

 tation trains being usually served by mules. The 

 remounts are bought in the country itself, 

 except a few heavy draft horses which are 

 imp(.)rted from Belgium. 



Hold Fno 



TiMC Ri:i'ri;i,ic.\N' r,i'.\Ki>, Full Dress 



Portugal, with four thou- 

 sand military horses, needs 

 four hundred remounts 

 annually, which are bought 

 at home wherever they can 

 be had without attaching 

 much importance to qual- 

 ity. They are from three 

 to seven years old when 

 bought, and the youngest 

 are sent to the remount 

 station of Villa Vigosa. 



Ser\'ia, which in times of 

 peace maintains six thou- 

 sand cavalry, draws her 

 remounts chiefly from Rus- 

 sia and Austria. 



Turkey possesses (on 

 paper) in times of peace 

 a force of three thousand 

 cavalry. The remounts are 

 bought from Russia and 

 Hungary, when there hap- 

 pens to be money enough 

 to do so. The Turks appear 

 to attach more importance to cheapness than 

 to quality. 



In Russia, according to the system of re- 

 mounting employed until January i, 1901, the 

 officers on remount duty bound them- 

 selves to deliver the horses at a 

 medium price, and in so doing played 

 the part of horse jockeys. At pres- 

 ent Russian remounting is done in 

 the German manner, that is to say, 

 by military commissions for the pur- 

 chase of animals. A certain number 

 of horses are drawn from the stud 

 farms of the state. Some regiments 

 buy their own mounts, the Cossack 

 regiments furnishing theirs and pro- 

 viding for them in every particular. 

 The government encourages the 

 breeding of the Cossack horses by 

 distributing three hundred stallions 

 annually among the Cossack villages. 

 Roumania in times of peace counts 

 twelve thousand cavalr)', and fifty 



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