416 
BREEDING OF HUNTERS AND HACKS. 
selecting a dam^ and, thus provided, he gives the principle he 
is testing a fair trial. But take the case of rearing a riding- 
horse, and how does the self-same man proceed ? In nine 
times in ten ‘^^just anyhow.^^ lie puts anything he may 
happen to have with anything that may happen to come in 
the way. As often as not, he scarcely looks at the horse 
he uses, but takes the word of some roving blacksmith, or 
broken-down coper who travels the country with an animal 
“ best calculated to perpetuate the breed of weeds and 
screws. Then the foal, when he does come, is cultivated 
much after the same fashion, or, that is, left pretty much to 
shift for himself. You will see him fighting for his own in 
the farmyard amongst a lot of store-bullocks, as likely as 
not wdth a hip down, or a hole in his side, from the thrust of 
a playful Hereford, and doing as well as he can on that 
grand specific, a due allowance of bean-straw. The result 
of this wonderful system is surely logical enough. At a year 
old the young nag is a half-starved, sulky-headed, big-bellied, 
narrow-framed thing, vvith most probably a blemish or an 
eyesore of some sort to complete his personal appearance, 
and with a general expression and carriage as lively as that 
of Rosinante, or Doctor Syntaxes Dapple. Y'ery naturally 
the breeder of such a prodigy is more than anxious to sell 
him, but quite as naturally can find nobody willing to buy 
him, until, without heart, mouth, or action—under-bred, 
under-fed, and half-broke—the butcher gets him thrown in 
with his next half score of beasts, or the village apothecary, 
on the spur of some hapless moment, is brought to believe 
that the colt may suit him ! And thus it happens that 
breeding nags does not pay—with rather less outlay and 
attention devoted to such a business than one would bestow 
on a sitting of Cochin-China eggs or a litter of terrier 
puppies. 
It may be argued fairly enough that a farmer does not 
and cannot make the same wholesale busines of breeding 
hunters and hacks as he does of producing cattle and sheep. 
Still anything that is worth doing at all is worth doing well, 
and this might be put yet more emphatically in a pecuniary 
point of view. There is scarcely an occupier of any position 
but who has always a goodish animal or two that he jogs 
round his farm, drives in his dog-cart, or, to say it out, rides 
with the hounds. Let these, or some of them in continual 
succession, be mares that from use, age, or accident, get 
beyond their work, and what then becomes of them ? Their 
owner cannot sell them, and he will not kill them; so that 
almost as a matter of course and necessity he proceeds to 
