36 HOW TO BREED A HORSE. 



the Conestoga cart mare, or the larger Vermont draught 

 luare — we do not speak in this connection of the Morgan, 

 or the Canadian, or the Norman, some mares of which 

 last stock have been recently imported into this country ; 

 since all of tfiese have some strains, more or less distant, 

 of thorough blood— to raise a progeny improved in spirit, 

 speed, lightness of action, endurance of fatigue and cour- 

 age, by stinting mares of that stock to blood-horses. This 

 is the simplest of all the ends to be attained, and can 

 be almost certainly accomplished, by sending the mare — 

 taking it for granted that she is sound and generally well 

 formed — to any thorough -bred horse, provided he also is 

 sound, well-shaped and free from vice. Any such horse 

 will, more or less, improve the progeny, both in blood and 

 in form, structure and strength of bones, both in frame and 

 spirit, without any especial reference to the particular strain 

 of thorough blood from which he himself comes. 



In the second and third, and yet more in later gene- 

 rations, when blood has been introduced, and the dams as 

 well as the sires have some mixture of a pure lineage, it is 

 more requisite to look to families ; since some families no- 

 toriously cross well with others, and some as notoriously 

 ill. Of course, it is better that the sire, where it is possible, 

 should be of a racing stock that is famous for courage and 

 stoutness, such as any of the stocks which trace remotely 

 to Herod, Cade, Regains, Eclipse, or others of known fame ; 

 but thus far it is not essential, or a sine qua non, since every 

 blood-horse, even if, as Sir John Fenwick said, in the 

 reign of Charles II., he be the meanest hack that ever 

 same out of Barbary, is so infinitely superior in courage, 

 stoutness and quality, both of bone and sinew, as well as 

 blood, to the best cold-blooded mare that ever went on 

 A shodden hoo^ that he cannot fail to improve her stock, 

 whatever may be his comparative standing among racers, 



