the Conestoga cart mare, or the larger Vermont draught mare—we do not speak in this connection of the Morgan, or the Canadian, or the Norman, some mares of which last stock have been recently imported into this country; since all of these have some strains, more or less distant, of thorough blood—to raise a progeny improved in spirit, speed, lightness of action, endurance of fatigue and courage, by stinting mares of that stock to blood-horses. This is the simplest of all the ends to be attained, and can be almost certainly accomplished, by sending the mare—taking it for granted that she is sound and generally well formed—to any thorough-bred horse, provided he also is sound, well-shaped and free from vice. Any such horse will, more or less, improve the progeny, both in blood and in form, structure and strength of bones, both in frame and spirit, without any especial reference to the particular strain of thorough blood from which he himself comes.
In the second and third, and yet more in later generations, when blood has been introduced, and the dams as well as the sires have some mixture of a pure lineage, it is more requisite to look to families; since some families notoriously cross well with others, and some as notoriously ill. Of course, it is better that the sire, where it is possible, should be of a racing stock that is famous for courage and stoutness, such as any of the stocks which trace remotely to Herod, Cade, Regulus, Eclipse, or others of known fame; but thus far it is not essential, or a sine qua non, since every blood-horse, even if, as Sir John Fenwick said, in the reign of Charles II., he be the meanest hack that ever came out of Barbary, is so infinitely superior in courage, stoutness and quality, both of bone and sinew, as well as blood, to the best cold-blooded mare that ever went on a shodden hoof, that he cannot fail to improve her stock, whatever may be his comparative standing among racers.
