BREEDING PROBLEMS. 
4S3 
theories of practical breeding, so numerous, interesting and quite 
valuable; it is yet another thing to apply our veterinary knowl¬ 
edge to the often demanded practices in assisting in the acts of 
copulation, during pregnancy, at birth, and to prevent or success¬ 
fully treat the defects and specific diseases of the new-born and 
growing animals. But the important fact we have yet to learn 
ourselves and to preach to our farmer-breeders is the broad, 
scientific fact, in its innumerable details, that not every country 
or part of country can produce every kind of breed; that all 
species, varieties, breeds, etc., of domestic animals are confined 
to restricted environments, to particular soils and climates, if they 
are to strive and survive; that in North America and in sections 
thereof, comprising larger or smaller areas, only such breeds can 
be maintained with profit and constancy that have survived and 
have permanently adjusted themselves to similar environments 
somewhere else. Such animals can produce true types as to size, 
shape, weight, temperament, color and organic peculiarities 
needed for certain climates and particular purposes. Or to use 
an illustration: We should, as veterinarians, prevent our breed¬ 
ers from importing the tall, heavy-weight Clydesdale stallion into 
the arid, hot, dry and rocky sections of Texas, Arizona, New 
Mexico to produce a farmer’s draft-horse, because this horse is 
a product of a soil luxuriant in grain, cool in climate and de¬ 
manding heavy work. We should warn other breeders that they 
cannot perpetuate the lightweight, fleet Arab horse in the cold 
and moist north, because he is unprotected against cold by his 
fine coat of hair, and his capacious lungs with wide-open air- 
passages expose him to danger not present in his warm, dry 
native country, which necessitate constant migration for food. 
The Clydesdale belongs to the north and the Arab to the south¬ 
west and not vice versa. 
The general ignorance of these facts among the breeders of 
this country has led in the past to that haphazard breeding and 
production of useless horses that has lately been so much criti¬ 
cized, and that the well-informed veterinarian can explain as due 
to the introduction of parent-stock into wrong environments, re¬ 
sulting in the offspring paying the penalty of degeneration, decay 
or even extinction. We cannot always keep on trying to produce 
breeds by constantly importing breeding animals from countries 
where they have become fixed types and let the progeny go to 
waste in our country. Of the millions of horses in the United 
States there are thousands upon thousands of this useless kind. 
The above thoughts may serve as an introduction into the 
