AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
f 165 
mares. Much as it is to be lamented that either 
good mares or stallions should ever leave the 
country, there are nevertheless abundance re¬ 
maining from which to rear, with judicious 
management, a valuable breed of young horses. 
In the hopes of affording some encouragement 
to the extension of this important department 
of agriculture, I offer the following hints : 
One of the most important elements of suc¬ 
cess is the choice of brood-mares. Never breed 
from a mare which is not well bred. By well 
bred I do not mean having many crosses of 
blood; for many mares, nearly and even .quite 
thoroughbred, are very undesirable animals to 
breed from. A well bred mare, in the true 
sense of the word, is one of which the progeni¬ 
tors, for many generations back liave been care¬ 
fully selected. In this respect Yorkshire breeders 
possess a considerable advantage over those who 
reside in districts where breeding is less ex¬ 
tensively carried on. In the former country it 
is easy for a farmer, even of moderate means, to 
procure mares which are above the suspicion of 
being tainted with cart-blood. Owing to the 
abundance both of thoroughbred and “nag”* 
stallions, a roadster-mare is seldom or never put 
to a horse of inferior stamp to herself. Thus, 
with little or no trouble or cost, a class of mares 
is in the hands of Yorkshire farmers which else¬ 
where it would require much expense and re¬ 
search to gain. With but little of outward 
show to recommend them, they breed excellent 
hunters, when put to a suitable throughbred 
horse; whereas mares of similar appearance in 
other countries would only produce stock fit for 
harness—if, indeed, they were good for any¬ 
thing. The reason is, that in the latter case the 
cart or other inferior crosses would reappear, 
and thus baffle the calculations of the breeder. 
Perhaps mares such as the Yorkshire farmers 
use are, on the whole, the safest for the agricul¬ 
turist to breed from. Although not so high bred 
as some others, they are less expensive to pur¬ 
chase, and require less judgment in their choice 
than those of a more ambitious character. 
They possess one recommendation which the 
farmer should never lose sight of—I mean power. 
Let his object be to produce a colt which, if it 
fails as a hunter, will be useful in harness; or, 
if some accident should unfit him for fast work, 
will at any rate take his share of work on the 
farm. I know no better test of success than 
this, viz., that the colt which loses a portion of 
its conventional value, should yet retain its real 
usefulness. Always make strong, well-set-on 
forelegs a primary object. They should be 
placed forward, so as to be an efficient support 
to the animal; and the shoulder ought to stand 
backward, in order to allow the legs liberty of 
action ; but it must be somewhat round and 
full, not thin and confined, which some persons 
conceive to be a fine shoulder. Never breed 
from either mare or stallion with a decidedly 
bad shoulder. An animal may dispense with 
almost every other point of excellence, and yet 
be of some value ; but if it has a bad shoulder, 
it bears so thoroughly the stamp of worthless¬ 
ness, that nothing else can make amends for 
this fundamental malformation. If your mare 
is tolerable in her shoulders, but not very good, 
endeavor to find a stallion which is particularly 
excellent in this respect. The forelegs and 
shoulders being right, action usually follows. 
But this being a very important point, do not 
■ take it for granted, but subject it to your 
strictest scrutiny. For my own part, I almost 
think as highly of action in a horse as Demos¬ 
thenes did of it in reference to an orator; at any 
rate, not even the most fabulous combination of 
beauty, breeding, temper, and shape, would in¬ 
duce me to buy a horse which did not possess it. 
The foot ought to be taken up straight, by a 
graceful bend of the knee, and set down again 
Hat, without any deviation either outwards or 
inwards. The most common faults of action 
are a sort of shovelling movement forwards, 
with the knees almost straight, and a sideways 
motion, either outwards or inwards, with one or 
both feet. But it is quite possible for the knee 
to be too much bent, and the foot to. be appa- 
*A l; nag” is a roadster. He is less iu size than a coach- 
horse, and better bred. 
rently pushed backwards when taken up instead 
of forwards, thus causing it to be set down too 
near the place whence it was raised. Objection¬ 
able, however, as such stand-still action may be 
in a hack, I should prefer it in a brood«mare to 
the opposite defect. The great reason why 
action in the mare is so essential is, that she 
having the roadster blood ought to supply it; 
whereas, it is not always possible to find it in a 
stallion; it is, indeed, very rare to see a thor¬ 
ough-bred horse whose action is such as would 
be desirable in the park hack, the roadster or the 
hunter. The racing man cares not, provided 
his horse’s head is first seen at the winning-, 
post, in what form he moves his forelegs. The 
qualities which win fame for the racer are speed, 
endurance, and pluck. The conformation most 
conducive to speed depends more on the back, 
loins and hindlegs than on the forelegs; it is 
therefore by no means uncommon to find horses, 
whose performances on the turf have been above 
mediocrity, with forelegs such as would not wear 
for three months on the road, and with action 
such as no man would willingly endure in his 
hack or his hunter. Thorough-bred horses, with 
every point such as the breeder would desire, 
combining power and beauty, equally excellent 
in their forelegs, their ribs, and their hindlegs, 
are not to be met with in every neighborhood, 
and even when found will seldom cover half-bred 
mares at all, and then only at exhorbitant prices. 
These are the magnates of the stud, which will 
not condescend to mates of descent less illustri¬ 
ous than their own. If, then, you cannot secure 
their services, you must avail yourself of the 
best within your reach. Supposing your mare 
has the forelegs of the action which I have re¬ 
commended, you may safely put her to a horse 
which has tolerable forelegs, provided he is in 
general power, in pedigree, and in performance 
such as you desire. I mentioned in a former 
letter that I once put some mares of my own to 
“ Tomboy;” his forelegs were by no means first- 
rate, and his front action was decidedly scramb¬ 
ling and bad ; but my mares being excellent in 
both those points, their stock showed no traces 
there of their sire’s deficiency. To breed colts 
with bad forelegs and insufficient bone, is to 
encumber your land with stock neither useful 
nor saleable. With mares of first-rate excel¬ 
lence in that respect, you greatly extend the 
range of stallions which it is safe to put to 
them. 
I shall not enlarge upon other points of the' 
mare in detail, for the reason that their selection 
may in general be left to the discretion of the 
breeder; aud also, because there are many of 
them which in practice will be more frequently 
supplied by the horse than the mare. I must 
say, however, that I should not like to breed 
from a mare with a bad head or a small eye. 
Natural soundness, especially in the feet, is very 
important, and so is good temper. With marcs, 
as with cows and ewes, there is a certain cha¬ 
racter difficult to describe, but which the ex¬ 
perienced breeder knows by instinct, as belong¬ 
ing to those likely to produce good stock. It is 
not the largest, or the most showy, but those 
which have a certain refinement of form, and a 
gracefulness of outline (which are as charac¬ 
teristic of the well-bred female as power and 
muscle are of the male,) which will most faith¬ 
fully reflect in their offspring their own merits, 
and those of its sire. Many a large, showy 
mare, on the contrary, will be provokingly uncer¬ 
tain in her produce ; one year bringing a foal as 
much undersize as next year it is overgrown. 
Such a mare ought to be discarded as soon as 
possible. 
By observing the course which I have recom¬ 
mended farmers who exercise ordinary judgment 
will make as safe an investment as they would 
in the breeding of any other kind of stock. 
Their colts will make either hunters, carriage- 
horses, or hacks, of a useful and powerful kind. 
There is a class of mares much higher than 
that which I have described above; I mean 
those which. combine great power with a pedi¬ 
gree little short of thorough-bred—mares which 
have in their youthful days been foremost in 
the hunting-field, and contended, perhaps not 
unsuccessfully in the steeple-chase. Such are 
the dams of the cracks of the Melton field, and 
of the victors at Liverpool and Leamington. 
But they are so difficult to buy and so rarely in 
the market, that the majority of breeders have 
little • chance of trying their luck with them. 
Their owners naturally desire to secure a foal, 
when it may be a great prize, won at a small 
cost, and will therefore seldom be disposed to 
part with them. It requires, moreover, a more 
ripened judgment and more mature experience, 
to select mares fit for the production of first- 
class hunters and steeple-chasers, than for the 
rearing of a less ambitious character of stock. 
The stallion to which they are put ought to be 
one of a superior class to the majority of the 
itinerant animals which secure the custom of so 
many farmers, simply because they save them 
the trouble of further inquiry. It may be laid 
down as a general rule that the horse ought, if 
possible, to be a better animal than the mare. 
Then there is the difficulty, even when a horse of 
tried excellence is found, of discovering whether 
his points and his blood are suited to the mare. 
The art and the science of breeding first-rate 
horses, are not to be mastered without much 
thought, trouble, and research. There is no 
royal road to it. He who wishes, in spite of 
every obstacle, to attain golden results, must 
adopt a course the very antipodes of the too 
common one, of putting some mare, because he 
happens to have her, to some horse, because it 
happens to come into his yard. He must never 
breed from a bad mare or a bad horse ; nor must 
he grudge a few pounds spent in securing the 
best of either sex within his reach. A judi¬ 
cious outlay of capital will here assuredly not 
fail to reap the reward which has attended the 
improvement of every other description of 
stock. Willoughby Wood. 
-•-+ «- \ 
BENEFIT OF GUANO ON WHEAT. 
Mu. Caibd says in the Agriculture Gazette: 
Last autumn, in sowing a large field, exactly 
one hundred acres, I directed the person who 
was laying on the guano to pass over an acre in 
the center of the field, all the rest of which re¬ 
ceived 2 cwt. per acre, at the time the wheat 
was sown. The produce of this and the adjoin¬ 
ing acre were cut and kept separate from each 
other, and from the rest of the field, and were 
threshed last week, yielding as follows : 
One acre, with 2 cwt. ’guano.. 44 bush., and straw 40 cwt. 
One acre, without guano .. 35 “ “ 30 “ 
Increase of Wheat 9 “ “ 10 “ 
The cost of the guano (Peruvian) on the field 
was 10s. per cwt., or £1 per acre, so that I have 
nine bushels of wheat for £1. The acre selected 
for the experiment was an average of the field, 
and I have no reason to doubt that for an ex¬ 
penditure of £100 in guano on that field, last 
autumn I have now reaped an increased produce 
of 900 bushels of wheat. This tallies very 
closely with the experience of Mr. Lawes, in 
Hertfordshire, where 2 cwt. of guano gives an 
increase of eight bushels of wheat. The land on 
which the above experiment was made is a 
strong wheat soil of good quality, thoroughly 
tile-drained, sown in good order after a bare 
fallow, on the 20th of September, and reaped on 
the 10th of August. 
-o © »-— 
Tiie Way they make Hot-Beds in Germany.— 
Take white cotton cloth of a close texture, stretch 
and nail it on frames of any size you wish ; take 
two ounces of lime water, four ounces linseed 
oil, one ounce of white of eggs, two ounces of 
yolk of eggs; mix the lime and oil with very 
gentle beat, beat the eggs well separately, and 
mix them with the former; spread the mixture 
with a paint-brush over the cotton, allowing 
each coat to dry before applying another, until 
they become waterproof. The following are the 
advantages this shade possesses over a glass one: 
1. The cost being hardly one-fourth. 2. Repairs 
are easily and cheaply made. 3. They are light. 
They do not require watering; no matter how 
intense the heat of the sun, the plants are never 
struck down or burnt, faded or checked in 
growth—neither do they grow up so long, sick, 
and weakly as they do under glass, and still 
there is abundance of light. 4. The heat arising. 
