Breeding and Management of Horses on a Farm. 
511 
perhaps no distinct species of horse among which are to be found 
so many absolutely worthless and useless animals as among those 
that are thorough-bred. This fact is fully borne out by the great 
num.bers of weedy, thorough-bred hacks that, during the London 
season, may be seen ambling round the parks, and which, although 
possessed of some degree of showiness, which captivates the fancy 
of many a man unskilled in the knowledge of those points denoting 
superior excellence in the horse, are nevertheless quite unfit to 
go through a very moderate share of fatigue with a weight of 
twelve stone on their backs, and, in all probability, at the close 
of the season may be purchased for a less sum than the first cost 
of begetting them. The evil of breeding these weakly under- 
sized animals unfortunately does not stop with their production, 
but numbers of them becoming, when good for nothing and un- 
sound, the property of men possessed of a little land — situated 
perhaps by the side of a common that affords but a scanty sub- 
sistence to young stock — are put to some cheap and worthless 
stallion, and made to propagate animals far worse than themselves, 
and whose naturally undeveloped proportions are still further 
stinted by the insufficient nourishment they are enabled to obtain. 
Thus the evil of a want of knowledge on the part of the breeder 
of the proper formation and pedigree of stallions and mares, 
spreading wider and wider every year, is in point of fact a national 
loss as well as a national disgrace to a country hitherto famed 
all over the world for its breed of horses ; and if allowed to con- 
tinue, from ignorance of the first principles of breeding, or from 
the attention of agriculturists not being properly directed to the 
most material points to be considered in the selection of sire and 
dam, must eventually deteriorate the excellence of our blood and 
deprive us of that superiority which has so long been our boast, 
and which up to the present moment has never for a long series 
of years been disputed by any nation under the sun. 
Ere I proceed to notice the principal features denoting excel- 
lence in the horse, and calling for the discrimination and judg- 
ment of the breeder, I must instil into my readers the indisputable 
fact that there are very few of the diseases and defects of the horse 
that are not hereditary, and that, if uncorrected by scientific dis- 
crimination, will not appear in the second or third generation. 
I must here presume that the breeder is intimately acquainted 
with the different diseases incident to horses, as the limits of this 
paper will not allow of my entering upon any notice of them. 
Some distinction, however, is to be made between congenital and 
acquired disease. Thus, for instance, a mare with curbs, although 
put at various times to different horses, has been known constantly 
to bring forth foals afflicted with the complaint of the dam, and 
such an animal should consequently be rejected from the stud by 
