Page:Hints to Horse-keepers.djvu/27

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CHOICE OF STALLION.
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of pace; to come again to work day after day, week after week, and year after year, with undiminished vigor. And it is scarcely needful to say that, under all ordinary circumstances these conditions are only compatible with the highest form and highest physical health of the animal. Malformation must necessarily detract from speed and power; hereditary disease or constitutional derangement must necessarily detract from all powers whatsoever. Under usual circumstances it would hardly be necessary to undertake to show that quickness of working, or, in other words, speed, is necessary to a high degree of excellence in a horse of any stamp or style, and not one iota less for the animal which draws the load or breaks the glebe, than for the riding horse or the pleasure traveller before light vehicles. But it has of late become the fashion with some parties to undervalue the advantages of speed, and to deny its utility for other purposes than for those of mere amusement; and, as a corollary from this assumption, to disparage the effect and deny the advantage of blood, by which is meant descent, through the American or English race-horse, from the oriental blood of the desert, whether Arabian, Barb, Turk, Persian or Syrian, or a combination of two or more, or all of the five.

The horse which can plough an acre while another is ploughing half an acre, or that which can carry a load of passengers ten miles while another is going five, independent of all considerations of amusement, taste, or what is generally called fancy, is absolutely worth twice as much to his owner as the other.

Now the question for the breeder is simply this: By what means is this result to be obtained? The reply is, by getting the greatest possible amount of pure blood compatible with size, weight and power, according to the pur-