SflTCHELL — BREEDING AND REARING OF HORSES. 101 
ing attained this maturity is never more essential than in se- 
lecting animals for breeding purposes ; they should have at 
least perfection in point of age, that is to say, the mare should 
be six years at least and the sire seven years old. There have 
been exceptions, and very remarkable ones, ta this univer- 
sal law, applicable to man as well as beast, viz. : that the 
offspring of immature animals is badly put together and 
shortlived, but these exceptions should act as beacons not 
as guides. The nourishment extracted by breeding ani- 
mals from their food should go entirely to repair waste and 
the demands of offspring, but never to develop their own 
growth, as in the fourth and fifth years when the whole 
system is irritable from the enlarging of the jaws to accom- 
modate the increasing number and size of the teeth. It 
must not be lost sight of that the system of breeding under 
consideration is entirely different from that followed in rais- 
ing stock for food ; the ends in view are dissimilar. In 
supplying meat for the market the breeder has no view to 
duration ; on the contrary, he is better pleased, the more 
quickly he can build up the frame with fat and lean on the 
smallest amount of bony structure; his beast is intended for 
food, while the horse on the other hand, destined for labor, 
must possess a bony structure as large and as dense as pos- 
sible ; he must have both strength and endurance to the 
utmost, whether intended for draught or saddle. It follows 
from what has been said, that as like begets like, a horse 
under five years old is as yet unfit for a sire ; the bones in 
his jaw being imperfect, he transmits this imperfection and 
probably some portion of the accompanying irritability to 
his offspring, at all events one thing is clear, his own frame 
requires for its completion those phosphatic elements of his 
daily food, which in a sire horse should be devoted to the 
