112 MULES AND MULE BREEDING. 



and upon these two crosses rest to-day the breeding of the race 

 of jacks known throughout the United States as the Kentucky 

 jack. It -will thus readily be seen that Kentucky owes her 

 position and character as a mule and jack-breeding State to this 

 direct infusion of Catalan blood. In fact, I risk nothing when 

 I attest that no jack in America has acquired celebrity as a 

 mule breeder unless more or less partaking of Catalan blood, and 

 that there is not one large, smooth, active mule on this contiaent 

 not indebted to the same infusion of this potent and powerful 

 Ijlood. 



" Sixteen hand specimens are not uncommon among the 

 descendants of Mammoth Warrior and Mammoth, nearly aU 

 Kentucky jacks, uniting the blood of both, with many others 

 running down to fourteen, fourteen and a half, and fifteen 

 hands high, but they are all mongrels, being almost universally 

 bred from jennies devoid of any breeding ; this accounts for the 

 fact that an imported Catalan jack fourteen and a half hands 

 high is fully equal as a mule breeder to the sixteen hand 

 native. 



" The writer has seen the test fairly made time and again. He 

 once owned a cold-blooded, open, large breeding mare, sixteen 

 hands high. He bred her repeatedly to a Catalan jack, fourteen 

 hands high, producing strictly first-class mules, and he afterwards, 

 for the sake of the experiment, bred her to Mammoth, the 

 imported jack alluded to, and bred a mule every way inferior 

 to her general breeding from the smaller jack. The union 

 of jack and mare sixteen hands produced a mule of even greater 

 height than either ; but leggy, light bodied, and light chested, 

 and every way undesirable. 



" Tall jacks and tall mares will never produce mules the equal 

 of tall mares and heavy jacks from foiu-teen and a half to fifteen 

 hands high. In fact, sixteen hand jacks almost invariably lack 

 shape, action, muscle, and are generally weak constitutioned, and 

 are not calculated to breed really serviceable mules. 



" The tendency has been to breed for mere height, which is a 

 great blunder, and should be abandoned, and more attention 

 paid to weight, action, high quality, and purity of blood." 



