614 
BREEDING PROBLEMS. 
The abandonment of breeding of the American lightweight, 
quick-moving, enduring horse, particularly of those strains suit¬ 
able for riding purposes. About the same time the Spanish- 
American war, the Philippine war and the South African war 
nearly took the rest of this kind of horses out of the country, 
never to return, and numbers of valuable breeding mares and 
stallions, entirely suitable to produce fair cavalry horses, were 
eagerly bought up by foreign buyers at the low figures quoted. 
All this short-sighted, almost hysterical squandering of horses 
was looked upon by many breeders as a welcome “ opening of a 
world-market ” for our horses. 
It was in 1902 when the writer had an opportunity to semi¬ 
officially investigate this situation, and the result arrived at ap¬ 
peared so serious as to induce him to take up the question of 
breeding of cavalry horses in the Breeders' Gazette, explaining 
the requirements of such a horse, and advocating government as¬ 
sistance and control over the horse-breeding operations. Some 
breeders, and a few army officers, seconded the recommendation, 
but the great majority of both parties still maintained that such a 
move would be a paternalism distasteful to our people and un¬ 
necessary, because our country was well able to produce the best 
cavalry horse in the world in any number desired. They could 
not see that a calamity was at our door,, and that it was yet time 
to avert it by ordinary foresight and preventive action. 
Nothing much was heard of the subject until about four years 
ago the war department suddenly discovered that cavalry horses 
could no longer be procured by the contract system of purchase, 
then in vogue. The quartermaster general of the army became 
alarmed and came to the conclusion that the establishment of an 
Army Remount Department would best serve as a solution of the 
problem confronting him. He studied the foreign arrangements 
in this line and worked out a plan that delighted the hearts of the 
army veterinarians, providing, as it did, for one chief veterinarian 
at the general remount office, and numerous other veterinary in¬ 
spectors and assistants to serve at the remount stations. But the 
war department, and particularly Congress, considered this plan 
too elaborate, cut it hither and thither, and all that came out of it 
was the establishment of three remount depots in 1908, each in 
charge of a cavalry officer, assisted by a contract veterinarian. 
The latter was not required to give proof of his special qualifica¬ 
tion for such a place, for which leniency he was left in a position 
without official standing or adequate emoluments. 
It is now generally concluded by army officers and veterina- 
