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GOVERNMENT BREEDING VENTURES. Within the past few months England and the United States have devised plans for improving the liorse breeding industry by means of the thoroughbred cross; The British Board of Agriculture has set aside 00,000 for this purpose and the Department of Husbandry at Washington has recommended a graut of 50,000 cash and 00,000 per year to send out and maintain 100 Bureau sires. To use an old expression, this makes it unanimous. Every important country in the world has now taken up the work and Canada with its flourishing National Bureau is leading the Anglo-Saxon race. Men have sometimes wondered why a country like England, the home of the thoroughbred, should bo behind other powers In this Bureau work, and why the United States, with thousands of thoroughbreds, did not try to improve the general industry. The answer may be found in the intense love of the English for the thoroughbred horse. He was thought too good to mate with a farm mare. Ho was hedged in and safeguarded at private breeding farms. The small breeder and farnnr could only look at him over a high paddock fence or see him carrying silken colors on a race course. To sacral bull in India was ever worshiped, so much as the thoroughbred in England. His blOod must not get into common veins, even if Englands cavalrymen walked. And as every breeder and horseman in Canada knows the same attitude prevailed in this country prior to the establishing of the National Bureau. It was France that first turned the Idol loose. The English method had brought the thoroughbred up to the highest state of perfection, or that there is not a doubt. France took the finished product, no matter what the price, and bred him to Tarm mares. Germany, always with an eye on France, noted the rapid Improvement in that countrys horses and followed her example. The German Master of the Horse jarred England by saying that Ard Patrick was noue too good to breerd to a farmers drudge, but ho was righti nevertheless, and Germany has proved it. Franco paid S1S7.500 for Flying Fox. Russia, after trying different methods, trailed in behind France and Germany, giving 00,000 for one horse, Galtee More. Austria-Hungary followed, and then Italy. Spain, Japan, Turkey. The Argentines, Brazil, Australia. Every one of these countries have been successful. Thirty years ago the Russian government started to improve the size and breed of their cavalry horses, having come to the conclusion that tho animals used were good, but too small, having a lot of Cossack ponv blood in them. First they tried breeding their small mares to the Percheron, but the produce could not stand tho work of arduous cavalry maneuvers and their feet and legs gave out. Then the government sent an expert to England, who, after some delay, decided to try Suffolk and Clydesdale sires. These were ,A sent back to Russia and produced a erop of sturdy s looking horses, standing about fifteen hands three inches. But these were not good cavalry horses. They lacked energy and they also lacked "pace." Again the Russians tried to solve tho problem, and this time they hit upon the correct plan, buying English thoroughbred sires. From that time until the present there has never been any doubt as to . the efficiency of the Russian cavalry horse. So great was the success of the plan that beforo many vears no price was too high for Russia to pay for a good thoroughbred sire, and when tho Derby winner, Galtee More, was offered for sale, they paid 00,000 for him. Now at the time English thoroughbreds were introduced into Russia, the breeding industry in that countrv was in much the same condition as It now is in the Canadian west. The cow pony, like the Cossack ponv. has been crossed with Percherons, SnfTOIks and Clydcs, with practically the same result as in Russia twenty-five years ago. Canadian Breeding Bureau Bulletin.
