be, and often has been, sought at too dear
a rate, and that bottom, courage, docility and action are equally
elements of money value and equally worthy of being sought for in
progeny. Nor is it unlikely that an attempt to breed for these last
named qualities, with a proper reference to speed, would result in the
production of as many fast horses as we now get, and in addition to
this, a much higher average degree of merit in the whole number
reared.
Another suggestion may not be out of place. Hitherto (if we except
fast trotting) there has been little attention paid to breeding for
special purposes, as for draft horses, carriage horses, saddle horses,
etc., and the majority of people at the present time undoubtedly
prefer horses of all work. This is well enough so long as it is a fact
that the wants of the masses are thus best met, but it is equally true
that as population increases in density and as division of labor is
carried farther, it will be good policy to allow the horse to share in
this division of labor, and to breed with reference to different uses;
just as it is good policy for one man to prepare himself for one
department of business and another for another. The same principle
holds in either case.
Sufficient attention has never been paid to the breaking and training
of horses. Not one in a thousand receives a proper education. It ought
to be such as to bring him under perfect control, with his powers
fully developed, his virtues strengthened and his vices eradicated.
What usually passes for breaking is but a distant approximation to
this. The methods recently promulgated by Rarey and Baucher are now
attracting attention, and deservedly too, not merely for the immediate
profit resulting from increased value in the subjects, but in view of
the ultimate results which may be anticipated; for, as we have seen
when treating of the law of similarity, acquired habits may in time
become so inbred as to be transmissible by hereditary descent.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] This was commenced by a cross of Coelebs, a Short-horn bull, upon
a common cow of remarkable excellence.
[25] Annals of Agriculture, Vol. 11, p. 224.
[26] The Hampshires are somewhat larger than the South Downs, and quite
as hardy--the fleece a trifle shorter. The Oxford Downs are not to be
confounded with the New Oxfordshires.
[27] Mr. Youatt here probably refers to length below, rather than
above, the knee and hock.
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