"The horse is a
miserable, weedy, and vicious pony; having but one good quality,
endurance. The breed is not indigenous, but the result of constant
importations and a very limited amount of breeding." (The Madura
Country, Pt. II. p. 94.) The ill success in breeding horses was
exaggerated to impossibility, and made to extend to all India. Thus a
Persian historian, speaking of an elephant that was born in the stables of
Khosru Parviz, observes that "never till then had a she-elephant borne
young in Iran, any more than a lioness in Rum, a tabby cat in China (!),
or a mare in India." (J.A.S. ser. III. tom. iii. p. 127.)
[Major-General Crawford T. Chamberlain, C.S.I., in a report on Stud
Matters in India, 27th June 1874, writes: "I ask how it is possible that
horses could be bred at a moderate cost in the Central Division, when
everything was against success. I account for the narrow-chested,
congenitally unfit and malformed stock, also for the creaking joints,
knuckle over futtocks, elbows in, toes out, seedy toe, bad action, weedy
frames, and other degeneracy: 1st, to a damp climate, altogether inimical
to horses; 2nd, to the operations being intrusted to a race of people
inhabiting a country where horses are not indigenous, and who therefore
have no taste for them...; 5th, treatment of mares. To the impure air in
confined, non-ventilated hovels, etc.; 6th, improper food; 7th, to a
chronic system of tall rearing and forcing." (MS.
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