The Principles of Breeding Part 8

But I do say that speed may 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 antic.i.p.ated; 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.