^ THE JOURNAL 



OF THE 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Vol. XV. No. 5. 



AUGUST, 1908. 



HORSE-BREEDING SCHEME. 



The President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries f 

 in the course of a debate in the House of Lords on the 6th of 

 July, 1908, made the following statement on the subject of a 

 scheme for the encouragement of horse-breeding, which has 

 been prepared by the Board in consultation with the War 

 Office :— 



Earl Carrington said : 



" I will state, as clearly and briefly as I can, the proposals 

 which eventually we mean to bring forward. We are face to 

 face with two things. We have to encourage horse-breeding 

 generally and to secure a reserve supply of horses of a class 

 from which remounts for the Army can be obtained. We have 

 heard this afternoon that the Army buys 2,500 horses annually 

 at five years old ; they pay £40 apiece, making a total o£ 

 £100,000 a year ; so that the War Office is a very fair customer 

 of the tenant farmers of England and Ireland. Then we arc 

 told that 70,000 horses would be required on mobilisation o£ 

 the expeditionary force, and the total number required to 

 bring the units up to war establishment is 174,000, of which 

 59,000 would be cavalry horses, a certain number would be 

 artillery horses, and the others would be heavy draught horses 

 necessary for the Army Service Corps and the wagons. This 

 total of 174,000 includes the horses for the Territorial Force,, 

 but I do not propose to touch on that question now. The object 

 is to get a scheme for the expeditionary force first, and then,, 

 afterwards, in concert with the Lord-Lieutenants and the County 

 Associations, we will endeavour to find a scheme for the Terri- 

 torial Force. The chief reason for having separate schemes 

 is to avoid overlapping. Your Lordships will learn with satis- 

 faction, on the authority of the Director-General of Remounts^ 

 (3864) x 



