BREEDING. In the throes of war for our existence, while every luxury must be dispensed with and every available man called to the colours, the British Government is solicitous to preserve hunting and racing. The authorities would preserve the trade of horse-breeding lest there be scarcity of army remounts. Let us breed pleasure-horses, they {229} tell us, in order to secure a stock of working horses. So let us encourage yachting to give us ships for cargo. Let us breed guinea-pigs as material to coin guineas. "If a yard of soap will make a flannel waistcoat for a pig, how far is it from the dome of St. Paul's to Christmas Day?" So mental confusion verge upon madness. The mettle of our pastures, and perfect artistry in selective breeding, have given to the British Isles the leadership of nations with almost every type of domestic livestock. But the high specialization of each type for a single function disables it for every other use. We have never bred a horse specialized for that single purpose of rapid and sustained marching, which is mobility. Our pleasure horses, excellent for sport, are expensive, delicate, unsound--lacking in endurance when we put them to serious work. As yeast is to dough, blood is to any livestock, and there must be thoroughbred blood in any working horse who has to face the terrors of modern war; but if there is any guidance in the origin and natural history of horses, the one type to give mobility to an army must be bred away from all green grasses and soft ground, on those arid plains which alone can make sound limbs, hard hoofs, {230} strong teeth and high endurance. It would be most reasonable to breed from Duns. [Sidenote: Breeding the war horse] As the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada have double the mobility of any regular troops in the world, their system of getting horses may be worth considering. Certain ranches of Western Canada have imported British thoroughbred studs, and bred from range mares a strain known as the Broncho. Averaging fifteen hands two inches, and 1,025 pounds in weight, these gelded horses and mares are raised on range grass under range conditions, broken at the ranches and bought for the Mounted Police at contract rates. Ranches in any arid lands of the Empire such as Southern Alberta, South Central British Columbia, Western South Africa, or Australia, would supply a stock for the army much sounder, and more enduring than any horses which can possibly be bred on soft ground or green grass. [Sidenote: Management]