No man should undertake the breeding of horses who has not first acquainted himself with the natural influences which operate in modifying descent.

He will then realize how difficult it is to obtain a uniform result from what appears to be the same set of circumstances.

He may rely on each variety being true to itself - that shires will produce shires; hackneys, hackneys; thoroughbreds, thoroughbreds, etc.; but he cannot rely on one or another to reproduce offspring of a uniform standard of excellence. Moreover, the same dam and the same sire mated through a succession of years will frequently be found to yield produce essentially dissimilar from each other in form, colour, endurance, and temperament. On this account breeding has been said to be a " lottery", and I do not know how it could be better expressed. Influenced in a large measure by causes which are beyond our control, and which we but vaguely comprehend, the element of chance must necessarily enter largely into the enterprise. Notwithstanding this, there is ample experience to show that the uncertainty incidental to horse-breeding may be greatly curtailed by the adoption of proper methods.

The natural tendency of both animals and plants in the course of propagation is to vary either in one or more of their parts, or as a whole, and this will be more especially the case in those specimens which have been rapidly forced to a higher state of development by artificial selection and treatment.

Beyond this there also exists a tendency, in these improved forms especially, to revert or throw back to a more or less remote ancestor, and in doing so the offspring may depart from the parental type by losing the more recently acquired and much-coveted characters. It is on this account that "back breeding" so forcibly calls for careful scrutiny and consideration in stud-management.

With these facts in view, it is not difficult to understand why produce so frequently differ from each other, and from the parents from which they spring, and why the fundamental belief that " like produces like" is so frequently untrue. Many a breeder has experienced the disappointment of producing an unshapely, worthless brute from an alliance of his choicest stock.

Derby-winners and the commonest of platers have frequently descended from the same parents. Champions and cup-winners claim family kinship with cabbers and vanners as the result of these reproductive disturbances.

Of course, discrepancies of this kind are not always referable to the causes alleged. Some are brought about by accident or neglect, in which sickness and indifferent feeding and housing play an important part; but the natural tendency to variation, and to revert to ancestors less improved or of inferior type, is accountable for much of the diversity of size, form, colour, temperament, and endurance so frequently encountered in the experience of horse-breeders.

To minimize the risks which must always attend the breeding of animals, and especially the improved races, it should be the aim and object of whoever enters upon the business to procure at the outset some of the best specimens of the variety he wishes to reproduce.

Outward form, however, is not necessarily the passport to success, but with that must be combined the property of prepotency, or power on the part of the breeding-stock to impress their meritorious points, size, form, action, power, quality, etc, upon their offspring. This property, largely possessed by certain strains or families, is but feebly exercised by others.

The Danegelt strain of Hackneys, the St. Simon strain of Thoroughbreds, and the Harold strain of Shires are forcible examples of the former, while instances of the latter will be present to the mind of all who have watched the stud career of some noted representatives of these varieties.

It is equally important that this power to impart to the offspring the best qualities of the parent should be as strongly implanted in the dam as it is in the sire, and it should also have existed in the ancestors of both for a succession of generations.

It will be gathered from the above that individual merit alone cannot be relied upon to perpetuate itself, unless fixed in the individual by a long succession of prepotent ancestors.

How often do we see in our show-rings horses and mares possessing the most perfect form and action, whose offspring never rise beyond mediocrity, and for the most part hardly reach that. Such animals are usually examples of extreme variation or reversion, whose high standard of excellence ends with the individual instead of being perpetuated in the race by the force of heredity.

Good characters to be transmitted to the offspring with reasonable regularity must be strongly inherited by the parents from remote ancestors. There must be a deep-rooted faculty in the family for reproducing their best traits of character.

Animals so constituted, when mated together, yield the best results, and by a process of selection the breeder is enabled to grade his stock upward, and thus improve the race.

It must, however, be remembered that this power to reproduce all that is best in conformation and constitution may be equally effective in transmitting any faults which may appear in the one or the other.

Where a weak point is found to exist in the make-up of a breeding animal, care should be taken to mate it with one which is not only strong in that particular respect, but descended from parents in whom the required quality was also a conspicuous feature. Only those who realize the importance of back breeding and its influence in shaping the offspring can hope to make breeding a profitable enterprise.