Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1896-09-25

A late issue of Southern contempt
rary contains a most ably written article
on the greatly discussedsubiect, "scientl-
fic breeding" The text is the sweeping as
sertion of an Eastern writer that mot
one man out of twenty in America-no,
not one out of fifty engaged in breeding
thoroughbreds-ha given the topic of
scientific breeding the consideration
which 1t deserves. ANY stallion was
bred to any mare without a thought as
to the desirabiity of the nick and as a
result most of the horses now running in
this country are sprinters that blow up
after they go three-quarters of mile"
The Southern writer goes on to show by
the records that scientific breeding, so
called, is mere moonshine. He asks why
Tammany is the only horse of any &C
count Tulahoma ever threw to Iroquois.
He wants to know why mare, bred for
years to particular stallion because her
first colt by him was a "crack" and
showed the union TO have been the
genuine "happy nick" will fail, utterly,
to produce more than the one. "a
mare" he says, "may nick all right with
Knight of Elerslie as the second or third
attempt, producing a Henry of Navarro,
then she may have five or six foals by
him that are not worth feeding" In his
opinion. all scientific breeding, ii there
can be such method of mating sire and
dam, must be resolved into hitting the
happy nick on blood basis. That will
not prove to be reliable, but it is better
than anything that is based upon mere
guesswork. Breeders of trotters long
ago learned, some of them at frightful
cost, that the mere doubling up Of blood
supposed to carry the trotting instinct
will not suffice. Their highly bred colts
have been beaten by plebians, half-breds
and others barely within the standard,
and then they have gone into the great
brood mare purchase movement to the
limit of their purses, hoping to retrieve
their fortunes. In the end they perhaps
raised a single colt that would answer
the question satisfactorily, and then had
him beaten all down the line by a cast
off whose dam was not Just what she
should have been, on paper, but who
had struck her happy nick. Scientific
breeding is largely an irridescent dream.
The element of chance can never be
wholly eliminated. Indeed it is doubt
full if the percentage of luck will ever be
reduced to point below 80. The I'M
traced mare who lifted Polonius from
obs urity has produced but one Page.
The dam of Robbie p. 2:l0l has that
great campaigner only to thank for her
place outside of oblivion. Minnehaha,
Beautiful Bells and Green Mountain
Maid are three of the greatest brood
mares the world has ever seen, yet we
doubt if any advocate of scientific breed
ing, at the time any one of the trio was
foaled. would have expected her to get
into the books. even with an obituary
notice. Summed up or spread out. So
called scientific breeding can be nothing
more nor less than the coupling of sires
ami dams that are bred in performing
and producing lines and whose progeny
will, therefore, be bred the same, or
very much the same, as other perform
ers and producers. Beyond that no
man can go and the writer who sets
himself upon the heights and scolds
breeders for failure to understand the
science of their business merely sue
ceeds in making himself ridiculous.
II Horse Review.