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PROFESSOR KARL PEARSON AND MR. LESLIE BRAMLET-MOORE, 
(a.) Mares appear to be less fecund at the beginning and end of tbeir breeding 
career. Hence, when the fecundity is based on a part only of their career, as it often 
must be, we do not really get a fair appreciation. 
(h.) A more fertile mare is likely to have more daughters go to the stud than a less 
fertile one, and hence we get a better appreciation of the fertility of the offspring of 
the former than of the latter. 
(c.) Fashion among breeders interferes largely with the exhibition of the natural 
fecundity of a mare. She may be a famous mare and is sent to a famous sire, even 
though produce is not so likely as if she were put to a sire of a different class. Thl.s 
appears to be practically recognised when apparently barren mares are sent in one 
season to two, or even three sires, or again to half-bred horses or cart-horses. 
(d.) Brood-mares which have produced performers are kept much longer at the 
stud, and we have the fecundity lowered by coverings after the mare is sensibly 
sterile. Less important mares are removed sooner from the stud. 
(e.) Good racing mares are often put late to the stud. 
{/.) In a certain number of cases we are simply told that the mare had no produce 
for a period of 3 mars, but whether she wms covered or not is unrecorded. 
(g.) Second-rate mares, or mares thought to be near the end of their fecundit}’", are 
often sold abroad. In the latter case the fecundity is fictitiously increased; in the 
former we have only a short period to base it on. 
(A.) There is no record kept of the half-bred foals, which for our purpose are as 
important as the thoroughbred foals. “Put to a hunter” is a not uncommon record, 
with no statement of the result. 
(i.) Comparatively infertile mares, unless of ver^" valuable stock or famous as racers, 
are not kept long enough at the stud to get a reliable measure of their fecundity. 
(/.) The smaller breeders will often put mares to inferior sires, already nearly 
worn out, either because they own them, or because their fee is low ; and thus again 
a full chance is not given to the fecundity of the mare to exhibit itself. 
(A) We have excluded in our determination of the fecundity foals dying young. 
This is often due to the fault of the mare, but is often again due to the environment. 
(/.) Lastly, thoroughbred mares are highly artificial creatures, and man}^ must 
sufter from their environment,'" either in the matter of barrenness or slipping foal, in 
a manner from which the wild horse or a more robust domesticated animal would be 
entirely free. 
These considerations may suffice to show that our values of the fecundiW will -only 
roughly represent what may be termed the natural fecundity, and we ought not for 
* I am told that there are like difficalties with cows. Cows are very liable to slip their calves, and 
one cow doing so, several others in the hei-d will or may follow her e.xarajile. There is a strong folk- 
belief in Wiltshire—I give it merely as evidence of what a slight change in the envii’onment is supposed 
to achieve—that the habitual presence of a donkey with the herd in seme way soothes the cows, and 
renders them less ready to slip their calves. 
