CHOICE OF A BREED 45 



lions at the time; one of trotting and thorough 

 blood (his sire a trotter, his dam a thoroughbred) ; 

 one a Percheron, and one a small pony. He 

 looked them all over and decided upon the Per- 

 cheron as being the heaviest and most compact. 

 The mare was an ill-looking brute — weedy, long- 

 backed, upright-shouldered, cow-hocked, and gen- 

 erally as lacking in good points as anything I 

 ever saw. To my expressed doubt of the wisdom 

 of breeding such an animal her owner averred that 

 her points might be a trifle off, but the horse would 

 set that all right. In point of fact, he did not; 

 I doubt if anything on earth could have set right 

 that combination of horrors, and the resulting 

 colt was such a disgrace to his sire that I objected 

 to the mare being brought back a second time. 



In connection with this same stallion I recall 

 another instance which illustrates the point, 

 though in a different way, and that was the breed- 

 ing to him of a thoroughbred mare. The mare 

 was a beauty and had the best of points, but was, 

 in my opinion, of too slender and delicate a type 

 to be bred to so heavy a horse. The colt, how- 

 ever, proved to be very handsome and, as he grew 

 and developed, was frequently pointed out to me 

 as evidence of my mistaken judgment. Still, I 

 had my doubts ; the mingling of types in him was 

 not perfect and his limbs, though beautifully 



