560 RBpori on the ITorses Exhibiled at Windsor. 
late Bob Ward, the gigantic huntsman of the Hertfordshii'e, used 
to ride ? And what kind of dam threw the horses which carry 
Mr. Merthyr Guest, Mr. Muntz, and other straightgoing welter 
weights ? The answer may be hazarded that these sixteen- to 
nineteen-stone horses would not come from any of the hunter 
mares seen at Windsor. I am inclined to think that those have 
reason on their side who aver that the heavy-weight horses we 
60 much admire — when we see them — are the freaks of nature 
for which there is no accounting, and which cannot be bred by 
any rule. If we adopt the various theories promulgated from 
time to time, we find that the dam of a weight-carrying hunter 
must have thoroughbred blood in her veins ; she must also have 
pony blood ; she must be a more or less distant connection of 
the carthorse for the sake of bone ; and in the meantime the 
cross may have filtered down through the various stages of 
vanner, machiner, and what not. Let us, however, assume that, 
having asked for this theoretically perfect brood mare for weight- 
carrying hunters, we have obtained her. We shall then find 
ourselves in possession of an animal with varied relationship, to 
any one of which she may throw back. Will the produce be a 
pony only fit to carry our youngest child ? Will it be a heavy- 
headed, flat-sided animal which may eventually fall into the 
hands of our coal merchant ? Or will it haply be a sixteen- 
stone hunter ? Who can tell ? 
Experience seems to point to two facts — first, that it is 
unwise to breed from a mare whose previous history is unknown 
to the breeder, for her produce may partake of the character- 
istics of the sire or sires with which she may previously have 
mated, just as the half-dozen foals thrown by a mare which was 
put to the horse after having once been covered by a zebra were 
all marked with the zebra stripes. Secondly, it may almost be 
regarded as an axiom that the nearer thoroughbred the mare 
is, the less danger is there of her throwing a foal very unlike 
herself or the sire. This strain, however, will not produce, 
except perhaps once in a lifetime, the fifteen-stone hunter ; so, 
in some form or other, recourse must be had to a heavier stamp 
of horse. In the palmy days of Irish hunter-breeding the question 
was satisfactorily solved by putting such sires as " The Old Bird," 
"Midge," "Elvas,""Naverino," "The Regulator," or "Mallet" to 
one of the clean-legged cart mares indigenous to the country. But 
a "Practical Breeder," writing in the Z'u&Zm Cm'oTi of August 27, 
1887, ascribes the falling off" in Irish hunters to the exportation of 
these native mares, and the introduction in their stead of Clydes- 
dale blood. I\Ir. Archibald Peel, who hunts in Sir Watkin 
Wynn's country, tried the experimeut of breeding hunters fron; 
