522 Breeding and Management of Horses on a Farm. 
will he be to beget a powerful and healthy progeny. Many 
farmers like to put their mares to the biggest stallions they can 
find, expecting thereby to breed large stock; and give preference 
to those horses that, besides being of enormous proportions natu- 
rally, are overloaded with fat. An animal in this pampered state 
is, however, by no means in the best condition for becoming the 
sire of thriving stock, fat being, to a certain extent, a sign of 
debility, and marking a weakness in the organs of assimilation. 
A horse, like a man, that is extremely fat is generally of a sluggish 
disposition, and incapable of great or continued exertion ; and as 
the good or bad qualities of both sire and dam are constantly pro- 
pagated to the offspring, it must be manifest that a horse bordering 
upon a state of disease cannot be in a fit state to propagate sound 
and healthy stock. 
In breeding the cart-horse it is of great consequence that the 
temper and disposition of both stallion and mare be taken into 
consideration. Docility, willingness to work, with sufficient 
energy to keep up a constant and equal pull, but without exhi- 
biting anything like absolute spirit, together with a hardy and 
thriving constitution, are qualities with which, if possible, both 
parents should be endowed. A team of steady-pulling draught- 
horses is invaluable to the farmer who has to contend with a 
heavy soil ; and if he have on his farm horses of slighter make, 
and better bred, either for road-work or for the lighter portions 
of his land, the different sorts should never, when it can be 
avoided, be suffered to work together. Although sufficient 
attention is never paid to this point, yet there are few persons 
who may not frequently have observed one horse in a team of 
jnore spirit and courage than his fellows, that on starting a heavy 
load will fruitlessly strain himself to pieces for perhaps half a 
minute before his companions condescend to draw an ounce. If 
kept back and patted occasionally by the carter while at work, 
liis labour is performed by jerks and sudden tugs, the rest of 
the team not being fast enough for him. Such a temper is by no 
means desirable in the true cart-horse. 
The great difficulty of procuring either stallions or mares that 
have not some defect of form, or a tendency to some species of 
unsoundness, renders it a matter of great importance that the 
farmer should be able to detect at once any deviation from that 
formation which has been noticed as betokening superiority, and 
that his judgment upon all points connected with the structure 
and powers of the horse should be capable of remedying any defi- 
ciency of make on one side by corresponding excellence on the 
other. Defects of constitution, however, are less easily combated 
than those of form, and in the mare are continually operating as 
a bar to the proper growth of the f(xtus. Thus a brood-mare 
