Breeding, Rearing, and Feeding Horses, Cattle, and Sheep. 83 
farmers who have bred them for thirty years, and have also given 
them up. I can safely say that those gentlemen would have 
now been 5000/. richer had they never bred blood-horses, 
though they were considered to have bred them with more than 
ordinary success." Mr. T. H. Hutchinson has rather more faith 
in the breeding of hunters, hacks, &c., if proper care is exercised 
in the selection of sires and dams. He knows too much of the 
subject not to admit the risk as compared with breeding cattle 
or sheep, but " the prizes to be won are very tempting. For 
instance," he says, " I know a tenant-farmer this year who 
realised over 600Z. for a three-year-old hunting-colt, and I have a 
two-year-old colt I gave 367/. 10s. for. These, of course, are ex- 
treme cases ; but I know many farmers who have made money by 
keeping a good half-bred brood-mare, and have had the sense to 
send to a fashionable good sire." Turning to Ireland, Mr. Wm. 
Davidson, Esker, Queen's County, has known several farmers 
abandon breeding of hunters in favour of cattle and sheep, and 
he says : — " I have known gentlemen of independent means turn 
to horse-breeding, but I never heard them say, after a fair trial, 
that it paid well." 
Until sounder sires are more readily available, at any rate, it 
is evident that we must look to landed proprietors, or gentlemen 
of "independent means," or to other countries, for the bulk of 
our supply of hunters, hacks, &c. There is strong and con- 
vincing evidence that, as a rule, these animals cannot be reared 
with profit. Therefore the ordinary rent-paying farmer must of 
necessity devote himself to some other kind of stock. In short, 
the rearing of hunters and carriage-horses in the present state of 
matters resolves itself more into a question of taste and fancy 
than of direct profit ; and so those who live by the cultivation of 
the soil alone cannot afford it. But there is surely wealth and 
enterprise enough in this country to keep up British studs. 
Complaints have been raised that the best of our blood-horses 
have been, and are being, drafted to other countries. Whose 
fault is that ? The matter is principally one of pounds, shillings, 
and pence. If more money were not offered by foreigners than 
can be got at home, depend upon it our best or worst stock 
would not be exported. To hold our own, therefore, as the 
country is able to do in this, as in most matters, we must just 
outbid foreign competitors in the case of horses as has been 
found expedient in the case of Shorthorns. It has been demon- 
strated that British noblemen and gentlemen, though in many 
instances at great cost, have successfully rivalled the foreigner in 
a struggle for the possession of the choicest Shorthorns. With 
quite as much effect might the nobility and wealthy people in 
Britain take their stand against all the world in the matter of 
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