VETERINARY" INSPECTION OF BREEDING STALLIONS. 
411 
do no more. They are maintained at National and State ex¬ 
pense and are required to teach agriculture, including the phy¬ 
siology, hygiene and diseases of domestic animals. 
While several of these colleges maintain excellent courses of 
instruction m the breeding and handling of cattle, sheep, swine 
and poultry, and keep high-class animals on the farm to serve 
as object lessons, no such plan with regard to horse breeding has 
been brought to our notice. 
Our preceding remark that horse breeding is the most diffi¬ 
cult of all agricultural pursuits may serve to explain in part. 
In recent years few veterinary colleges, having courses of 
three years of nine months each and requiring of students high 
academic training before admission, have been founded, notably 
in connection with great universities, where by amalgamating 
agricultural teachings on stock breeding with zootechnics from 
the standpoint of the veterinarian, joint courses have been insti¬ 
tuted which will in time accomplish good results, though lack¬ 
ing yet the material for object lessons in the science of horse 
breeding. 
If the nation or some of the states would found well-appointed 
studs in affiliation with agricultural colleges and under scientific 
veterinary supervision, much could be learned and taught which 
would exert a lasting influence on horsebreeding in the United 
States, and would perhaps do more than any other force to ren¬ 
der effective the official inspection of breeding stallions. 
With such material for object lessons, a course in horse 
breeding could be devised consisting, besides other fundamental 
instruction, of history of breeds, the influence of food, climate 
and soil upon size, form, endurance and decay ; of defects which 
tend to be transmitted from parent to offspring and which would 
probably interfere with the latter’s usefulness ; which diseases 
or defects are hereditary, which are not. 
Many people are not aware of the utter confusion prevailing 
as to which diseases are hereditary and which are not. 
The so-called “ moon blindness ” is generally said to be here¬ 
ditary, but if an affected animal, not yet blind, be transferred 
