VETERINARY INSPECTION OF BREEDING STALLIONS. 
409 
reeding and renders horse breeding by far the most difficult of 
all agricultural pursuits, and correspondingly it offers to the 
successful breeder the greatest pleasure and profit. 
It affords the freest field for the application of human intel¬ 
ligence to the production of an animal pre-eminent in beauty of 
form, symmetry of motion, endurance, obedience, intelligence 
and affection. 
It would at once appear that if national aid be advisable for 
the promotion of agriculture, horse breeding should be highly 
favored as compared with other branches of agricultural indus¬ 
try, and so we find many European nations maintaining perma¬ 
nent breeding establishments, not only for keeping up directly 
the quality and number of horses within the realm, but as a 
great object lesson and educator to civilian breeders, and to this 
they add official inspection of private stallions, approving under 
various plans only those which are worthy. The value of offi¬ 
cial approval of stallions, when properly and intelligently ap¬ 
plied, must appeal to all. 
So far as we know it has scarcely been attempted in this 
country, and what has been done has been fragmentary and of 
little or no enduring value. 
_ H° rse shows have at times employed veterinarians to super¬ 
ficially inspect and exclude diseased animals from the show 
ring, and some agricultural fairs have resorted to a similar plan, 
yet notoriously defective animals are permitted to compete for 
and carry off important prizes, though their defects are trans¬ 
missible to their progeny. 
A weak provision in many prize lists directs that no un¬ 
worthy animal shall receive a prize. The unworthy animal has 
no. right in the show ring nor in the show stalls, unless con¬ 
spicuously labeled “ defective.” 
If such abuses prevail at shows and fairs, which are intended 
as popular educational institutions, how much more mischiev¬ 
ous is the free license to use any stallion for public stud service 
without regard for individual merit or ancestral history, and yet 
the only way to curb these official abuses is by proper inspec- 
