508 Breeding and ManagemeM of Horses on a Farm. 
nips that were drilled with dead burnt ashes two years since, 
were not fit to hoe, when the thirty-acre plot was furnished and 
even sown at the commencement of the field. The same year 
my house ashes I put on one side of the field, and black peat 
ashes on the other, therefore every other drill tread would be 
sown with them. We had to hoe all the peat-ashed sown rows 
first, right through the field, and both were used in the same 
quantities, about two waggon loads per acre. My turnips are 
really excellent, and I used nothing else. I am just finishing 
a 30-acre field, which has been eaten off with 850 shearlings : cal- 
culating the sheep at 6rf. per head^ makes the turnips come to 
bl. 7s. an acre ; all old sheep. 
Bonby, Lincolnshire, 9th Dec., 1844. 
'KJil'K.— Breeding and Management of Horses on a Farm. By 
John Burke, Jun. 
While the attention of English farmers is very generally directed 
towards improving the various breeds of sheep and cattle for 
which our island has become so celebrated, there are very few of 
this class of persons — except in some counties deemed peculiarly 
adapted to breeding horses — who pay more than the most ordinary 
attention to selecting such mares and stallions as are likely to 
produce stock either valuable as hunters or cart-horses ; while 
the greater number perhaps of agriculturists are inattentive to 
the various points which constitute excellence in the shape or 
qualifications of sire and dam, contenting themselves very gene- 
rally with breeding from any mare they may happen to possess, 
whether good or bad, and with any stallion that may chance to be 
in their neighbourhood. It will be my endeavour in the follow- 
ing pages to point out those properties in the parents which are 
necessary to the propagation of valuable offspring, and without 
which the horse-breeder ran scarcely venture to hope for remu- 
neration ; and likewise to demonstrate upon physiological prin- 
ciples — the only true ground-work of scientific management — the 
most judicious plan to be pursued in rearing young stock with a 
view to improving their growth and consequent caj)abilities. 
There are very many points in the various descriptions of horses 
which are common to all, and to which it is necessary to pay the 
strictest attention when choosing a stallion or jnare for the pur- 
pose of breedmg; but there are likewise several others which 
are of greater importance in one species of horse than in another. 
Thus, for instance, those (jualitics which denote superior strength, 
combined with a certain degree of activity in the walk, are prin- 
