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WATER IMPORTANT FACTOR — — — » Ilealth of Horses Often Affected Radically by Water Change. . ♦ Genaaa I.xpert Cites Instances in Which Water Has ll;i l Surprising Kf- fecls M KnCCIS. Fricdrich Becker, the QciBUUI turf expert. Writing in "The Thoroughbred Record," in an article in The Thoroughbred Record," to tlio liealth and growth of horses: I have been in Paris many more times than I can remember from occurrences and experiences made, on particular trips, but only in June, 1911. when, by chance, I found myself one day near the Homo des Invalides, j j conscience bade me to make amends for what frequently 1 had felt to be a serious deficiency in my culture and refinement. So in 1 went, and deeply deplored my indifference toward historical sights when I entered tho chapel and stood, under the blue light cast from the cupola over the mausoleum, at the tomb of Napoleon. I passed a resolution to mend my ways, but only in August, last, at Dublin, when one morning I really did not know what to do with myself, an opportunity offered itself to test its hold on me. At no time before I had the least trouble about the sights of Dublin, and decided this "manko" a term Med in Cermany for deficiencies, but presumably not coined from the same vocabulary elements as "Mankato" repaired forthwith. And when I inquired about some of the Pub- j lin sights worth seeing, the factotum at the I j hotel lounge mentioned — Guinness brewery in tho first line. I readily took the tip, for 1 have seen in my time quite a number of such anti prohibition places and was rather curious to find how the foremost Irish compares with them. WATKU FOR STOUT. I am not going to report on this inspection after having stated that I propose to talk | about "Horses and Water." but the amiable ! cicerone told me something about the water! I used for the manufacture of the stout which I I consider an important matter also in the! breeding and rearing of blood horses. Guinness get their water for brewing purposes from tho springs which feed the upper level of the Grand Canal, in County Kildare. that is to say, from about eighty miles away. I know that water, pure and simple, may be manufactured from two portions of hydrogen and one of oxygen, and that any chemist is able to stae* dxitelly the percentages of iron, lime and so forth, contained in samples of water taken from different springs, but I also know that, if you add to pure water exactly the percentage of iron, lime and so forth, you will never be able to brew such stout at any other place in the world. The reason, then, why there are so many breweries at Munich, at Iilsen, at the Trent in Kngland. and have been at Milwaukee, would appear to be given by a particular suitability of the water in these towns for special brewing purposes. ASK OK KIXSEM. I was reminded of the lecture on water at Guinness when I wrote down the history of Kincscm and had to record that she fell ill for the first time in her life from the drinking water at Newmarket. Moreover, it Is stated that she arrived at her trainers stable as a yearling in "skeleton-like" condition, but there developed a lions appetite and within a month did not show any more the slightest traces of the hoops and seams of her barrel. It is hardly likely that Kinc-scm was ever put on short rations at the stud, nor may we presume that her trainer lias fattened her by overdoing the usual rations. At the same time it cannot be denied that tho change from the stud to the stable had done her a world of good, and since she so readily reacted on the change of water at Newmarket, we may presume that sho was susceptible to the kind of water she got to quite an extraordinary extent. There are trainers who hold that water is everything. You are able to buy the best of oats- and hay, but it wont help if the water is not much good, whilst notoriously liorses thrive well on good water with rations consisting of poorer quality of solid food. Why. I ask, should conditions be different in the rearing and keep of horses from what they are in mankind? The finest types of "aborigines" amongst the cultivated races you find in the valleys and the low land at the foot of a range of mountains or in what I may call narrow distiicts in a geol igical respect, as opposed by the Wide, flat and open countries. ■HILiOin AMI l.OWI. YNI KUS. Put up a Scotchman against a Southerner. a Bavarian against a Pomeranian, *a North Italian against a South Italian, a Frenchman from the Swiss frontier and the valley of the Rhone against the Northerner, etc., etc., they all and sundry are races within a race, though in their mod** of living there hardly exist any fundamental differences. Air and climato as such certainly have much to do with such differentiations within a breed, but a more potent influence I assign to the water. Surely a child fed from a tap spending filtered Thames* water cannot grow as strong and sturdy as a Scotch babe fed from the water of the Highland wells and the rivers and rivulets descending from the Scotch mountains with all the bone-forming and blood-purifying substances left in it. The "mens scna in corpore sano" saying applies best to the psychological development! ; of children and history, in fact, clearly bears out that the most enduring and the most daring type of men is found amongst the Scotch, tho Irish, the Tyroleses, Bavarians, and so forth. This is at,,- of the most interesting chapter* in historical works on the Gnat War. As far as the Central European ai mies are concerned the worst regiments w«r - those consisting of Saxons ;ind Aus-trians, the former inhabitants of the most central part and the most flat district in the whole of Germany. Water lays the foundation for a healthy constitution and. in due course, for a healthy mind, and I maintain it is in horses the aaam aa in mankind We cannot make good tie- in -effects f bad water by improving the quality and increasing the roantlty of solid food. There are studs in England, Germany, us in any other country where the favorable natural conditions have greater bearing on tho standard of the produce than the quality j of the "blood." It would appear as if one ; j of the main reasons, determining the hardiness of the Irish horse is the limy Irish water. The Harzburg siud in Germany is situated along the northern outskirts of the Hartz mountains and several of its paddocks arc undermined by pits of an iron-ore mine. It has its own wells and through all the stables and the watering places in the paddocks water is running permanently from these wells. The same conditions prevail at the Weil stud in Wuerttenberg and the annual racing records of horses bred in these studs clearly bear out that they are hardier and more durable than those bred in any other stud in Germany. I might even go as far as to maintain that the quality of the water is a more important matter than the quality of the pasture, but also here, like on any other fields of cultivation the development of which depends on mans intellectual capacity, nature renders no assistance at the point where we need It most; no breeder is able to improve water by artificial means. If stud owners, knowing the water in the stud to be lacking in lime and iron, would add theae substances themselves, the result assuredly would be quite different from natures way of improving it and probably l.e more harmful than beneficial. If second-raters, roarers or otherwise affected stallions and brood mares turn out tODnotchers in Ireland, Australia and the I, s. A., such occurencea would admit of comparison with mankind benefiting from the waters at I lorn-burg, Spa, Karlsbad, which restore to the hody substances, the shortage of which is I causing so many diseases.
