ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE FARM HORSE. 325 
timonies there are, and have existed, of the fallacy of breeding 
from imperfect animals. In the brute creation, in which the in¬ 
tercourse of the sexes can be regulated, the influence is strikingly 
shewn by the improvements which have taken place in the different 
breeds of animals, and in the alterations of the character of others; 
thus, how much we have under command by crossing, size, form, 
bone, action, and temper, &c. Knowing this, of what vital conse¬ 
quence is it to the breeder to avoid all congenital or constitutional 
defect in the selection of animals intended for propagation ! To 
enter too much into this matter would fill the volume of The 
VETERINARIAN ; but to what extent diseases are capable of trans¬ 
mission the readers of this essay may reasonably inquire. 
I should say, perhaps all congenital disease is hereditary, and 
that I have known accidental diseases become so after awhile. 
To maintain this argument, a horse receives a blow on the eye ; 
local inflammation is set up, and at last it becomes constitutional, 
ending in cataract in one or both eyes. The offspring from such an 
animal, I have many times witnessed, becomes affected with oph¬ 
thalmia, notwithstanding there was no defect in the eyes of either 
sire or dam previous to the receipt of the local injury. I have also 
seen a foal born blind, having a lenticular cataract in each eye, 
from the dam having been put to a stallion with a cataract in each 
eye, the result of a constitutional inflammation. It is also my firm 
conviction that all accidental diseases must make some general 
derangement or constitutional impression on the system before they 
can be continued or transmitted to the offspring. The principal 
maladies in the horse capable of being developed in their issue, 
sooner or later, are all defective organizations,—ophthalmia, spavin, 
curb, ringbone, contraction, founder, and broken wind; with almost 
every other disease of the respiratory organs; also all vicious 
habits and propensities. The handing down of these defects in the 
progeny has not received that attention and care it scrupulously 
requires of the public. Every investigation, and all the ingenu¬ 
ity of man, ought to be directed in tracing out defective formation 
and disease in animals intended to breed from ; and efforts made 
to arrest the onward progress of hereditary transmission, by shun¬ 
ning those influences which maintain it. Some breeders consider 
it a difficulty to procure breeding mares or stallions free both from 
defective form and from proneness to disease. Let us discard all 
those animals in which defect or bad conformation is visible, and 
not do as too many of us do, year after year, breed from animals 
possessing the seeds of disease, and every bad quality evident to 
the most casual observer. The old and trite saying should never 
be forgotten—“ like begets like.” On the subject of breeding in 
and in, in connexion with hereditary disease, great caution is re- 
