Purchase of English Mares by Foreigners 



In France, Germany, Hungary, and other foreign countries 

 breeders work on very different lines. They breed for business, 

 not for pleasure ; their aim is to produce the highest stamp 

 of useful horse. With this definite object they have for sixty 

 years and more been buying English mares, free from bias in 

 favour of one strain or another. Geldings, the foreign breeders 

 scarcely ever purchase from us. The larger number of mares 

 bought by them are those which have been accidentally 

 blemished ; but in all cases the shape and not the pedigree 

 of the mare guides the purchaser. They also buy sound 

 young mares for work, and with the view of breeding from 

 them afterwards. 



The eagerness with which fpreign agents seek to buy 

 mares from us has given rise to the idea that England and 

 Ireland have been and are being steadily drained of the best 

 mares ; and statements to the effect that " all our best mares 

 are sold to go abroad " have been frequently published. 

 Nothing could be more misleading. The owners of good 

 brood mares will not part with them, and we have in this 

 country the foundation-stock from which to produce in the 

 future, as we have done in the past, horses of all breeds far 

 superior to any that are bred in France and Germany. We 

 in England and Ireland want, not the material, but the 

 judgment to use it properly. We have the material, and that 

 of the best, in abundance ; but we do not make the best use of 

 it. Foreign breeders buy what they can, and, by the exercise 

 of unbiassed judgment in mating the mares with suitable 

 stallions, turn the material obtained from us to far better 

 account than we should do. 



I insisted on this point in the address I read before the 

 Farmers' Club in March, 1884.* I said "it was an admitted 



* Rilling and Driving Horses : Their Breeding and Management. This 

 paper gave rise to a most interesting discussion, in which the late Dulce of 

 Westminster, the late Earl of Carrington, the late Mr. Edmund Tattersall, 

 Sir Nigel Kingscote and other prominent authorities took part. 



