16 ELEMENTS OF HIPPOLUGY. 



characteristics of his family are: beauty and symmetry of 

 conformation, hardiness, longevity, docility, willingness, and 

 endurance. 



The light harness-horse and the lighter sort of work-horses 

 in the United States are, in the main, mongrels. They are so 

 badly bred, so crossed with conflicting strains, that little can be 

 predicted of the quality of the average foal, based on the qualities 

 of its sire and dam.* 



The Arab horse is the aristocrat of the horse world. These 

 wonderful animals have been kept of pure blood for "a known 

 period of 3,500 years' 'f in the deserts of Arabia. They have 

 furnished the uplifting, ennobling quality which has been intro- 

 duced in the blood of commoner horses from a period dating 

 back from 1600 to 2000 B. C. 



Their influence is met with in the mustang of the Western 

 plains and in the small Philippine pony, both degenerate Arabs, 

 descending through the Spanish barb. Both are wiry, plucky 

 little animals, showing little of the graceful conformation of 

 their great ancestors, but much of their courage and endurance. 



GENERAL DEFINITIONS. 



The perfect male of the horse is called a stallion or an entire. 

 When altered (castrated), he becomes a gelding. The female 

 is a mare. 



The young is ealled, for either sex, a foal. Specifically, the 

 male foal is a colt; the female a filly. 



A colt, or filly, becomes of age when the corner incisor teeth 

 grow up level with the other incisors of the lower jaw, — about 



*This condition has been realized by the better farmers ot the 

 country for some years, and, due to this fact and to the efforts of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry df the Department of Agriculture, the 

 quality of the cheaper grades of horses is being rapidly improved. 



tPage41,"The Arab Horse," Spencer Borden (Doubleday, Page 

 & Company, New York). 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



