STUD BILL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12445, 30 August 1902, Page 7

STUD BILL.

fire Stud Bill, introduced by the Minister for Agriculture, to provide for the licensing of stallions and the improvement of the breed of horses in New Zealand, is apparently nob to he proceeded with this session. The proposal contained in it is that licenses shall only be issued in respect of stallions which, upon examination, are held by two ■veterinary surgeons appointed by tlie Department to be "sound and in every way fit for stud purposes." A "sound" horse is, if the ordinary meaning of the word is to bo accepted, a horse that is free from flaw, defect, or decay. But itis objected that some of the most successful sires in the colony have not been free from blemishes of an accidental nature, mid that the effect of the proposed legislation would be to throw these out of stud work in favour of less valuable animals. Mr Massey's estimate is that 50 per cent, of the stallions in the colony are unsound, and, although the Minister professed to regard this as far too sweeping an assertion, there is a certain amount of presumptive evidence in support- of it to be found ill the reports of the officers of the Department who had the .selection of remounts for South Africa entrusted to them. Mr Gilruth's testimony 011 the subject as contained in the report- of the Agricultural Department- for 1900—a report which, iu pursuance of some arrangement that cannot be commended, is excluded from the Blue Books, but is circulated in a separate form—is conveyed in emphatic terms. "We have undoubtedly too large a proportion of unsound horses," lie says, "both in the light and heavy breeds, and the character of the various unsoundnesses discovered among the large number of hacks examined during the past, few months proves conclusively that, in the majority of cases, hereditary transmission of at- .least a predisposition is the principal factor in their production." Mr Gilruth expresses the earnest hope that one result of this experience will be the realisation by breeders of the necessity for exercising greater care and inore common sense in their selection of stallions. "It needs," lie says, " united action on intelligent lines, some enterprise in the direction of the importation of a few good sound sires, not it-rotters, and the boycotting of those notoriously unsound and unlit stallions now disseminating their various faults throughout- the colony." The Government veterinary surgeons all agree/ in fact-, in affirming that- there is an extraordinary proportion of unsound horses ill the colony, and, while this does not accord with the opinion expressed by Mr Duncan, it indicates the desirability of passing Mr Duncan's Bill—with, perhaps, certain modifications as to the character of which the agricultural and pastoral societies might advantageously be consulted.