testably, transmissible. Blindness is, if possible, yet more so; and even when one eye is destroyed by accident, if the other eye, through a sympathetic affection, follow it, we should consider it by no means safe to breed from a horse so injured. Lameness, arising from pure accident, is of course not transmissible; but where a race-horse has broken down, as it is termed, in running,—that is to say, where the sinews, or smaller metacarpal bones, commonly known as the splint bones, have given way from want of strength sufficient to endure the strain laid upon them,—it will be well to observe whether there be not some visible defect of the conformation of those parts, tending to undue weakness: such as disproportionate length of the lower or cannon bone of the fore leg, which can scarcely be too short; or the defect which is generally called tying in, consisting of an improper contraction of the volume of the leg, immediately below the fore knee, and indicating an insufficiency of the splint bone. These malformations are distinctly hereditary. If a horse, therefore, break down in his fore legs, having such a malformation, the breaking down itself may be said to have been hereditary; and one would, therefore, eschew breeding from such a horse. Now, to give two cases in point: there is probably not a horse in America which a good judge would sooner select, in regard to size, strength, power, and all other qualifications, to which to put country mares, than Boston. He is in every respect the beau-ideal of what, in England, would be considered a hunter getter. And the English hunter is precisely the stamp and style of horse which is the most profitable for the farmer to raise, for all general purposes. No one in England would drive before his carriage, or ride on the road, anything but English hunters, if he could afford
