CHAPTER VI.
IMPROVEMENT OF THE BREED BY MEANS OF FOREIGN CROSSINGS.
However, if with strength acquired and faults corrected, style is not attained, it may be sought after by judicious crosses with well-chosen foreign types.
Two different breeds present themselves to us as means of improving our stock by the introduction of foreign blood: the Arabian, and the English, with its variations. Starting from this point, let us study both and endeavor to discover, by analogy, which one would best suit, or, rather, which one is the least unfavorable to the purpose.
I will examine, one after another, these two methods in detail, leaving to the cultivator, who is most interested in the question, the choice of employing that which seems to him the best and the most appropriate, taking into view the fertility and the nature of his section. But I must, from the beginning, lay down as a principle that both are more expensive than is interbreeding. A race to become fit to receive a foreign cross, should be prepared for it in advance, in order to shorten, as much as possible, the distance existing between the breed so formed and proved and that which we seek to create.
In fact, the foreign cross can do no good, unless the desired qualities in the race upon which it is made are permanent, fixed, and characteristic.
Why not think also of increasing our resources by better cultivation, by liberal feeding, by choosing, as I have said above, among the race of the country, the most perfect types and those most likely to correct what is vicious while they impart their own good qualities? Methods of this kind, pursued for a long time and persistently, are alone capable of preparing, without inconvenience, for a foreign cross.
Drain your wet meadows, irrigate your hill-sides, fertilize your soil by the use of improving manures, make productive fields everywhere, create meadows, grow heavy oats, enlarge your stables and make them clean, healthy and airy. When you have done this, then, but not before, you can cross your races with foreign blood, more delicate than yours and accustomed to and requiring greater care and attention.
I know that this slowly progressive manner does not possess the sympathies of those who, at the commencement, are restless at not having already reached the goal. But it is sure and free from errors, whilst the other, (France has but too many examples of this), after money squandered and years wasted, reduces the breeder who has recourse to it to a more miserable condition than that from which he wished to escape.
Our furia francese, which renders us, irresistible in war, our fancy for new fashions, which gives birth to those wonders which the world hails with ecstacy, and our proverbial inconstancy, cause us almost always to go astray in breeding. Fashion has no sooner praised horses of such and such a race, of this or that model, or such and such a coat, than we must immediately produce the like, without first ascertaining whether or no our race be prepared for crossing with them. The result of such crosses would be about as valuable as a discussion between a fishwoman and an academician!
Nature, left to herself, is a thousand times more intelligent than the man of systems. Are there ever found, among the wild animals, among lions, tigers, stags, chamois, etc., either spavins, tumors, periodical inflammations, or any of those thousand infirmities with which our domestic horse is afflicted?—And here is the reason: in the rutting season, the possession of the females becomes the incitement to bloody battles. It is always the strongest, the most vigorous, the bravest, the most venturesome, and the best made stallion, which receives as a reward for his victory, the submission and the admiring love of the harem.