The Timaru Herald. MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 1903.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXIX, Issue 12142, 10 August 1903, Page 2

The Timaru Herald. MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 1903.

The. monthly meeting of the, committee of the Timaru Agricultural and Pastoral Association, was held on Saturday, when, among other business transacted, the report of. the sub-committee on the Stud Bill, was brought up and discussed, and a resolution oa-the subject was adopted. The sub- . committee expressed tile opinion that " the j provisions respecting, examination were too arbitrary, and much too. drastic in the case of hereditary unsoundness, in consequence of which, if the Bill became law, some of the very best horses in the country would be debarred from use, while any badly bred, ill-shaped baast, might (if found sound) go about under cover oil the Government license perpetuating his bad breeding and bad shape." Unfortunately we have not yet been supplied with a copy of this year's. Bill, and under ordinary, circumstances we should have deferred commenting on the. sub-committee's report until that omission had been supplied. But there is no time to be lost if the views of the Agricultural and Pastoral Associations are to be brought to. bear with full weight upon the Minister in charge of the Bill. We agree with the sub-committee that some of the provisions are too stringent; but does the Bill positively forbid the use of a horse as a sire, unless the owner has procured from the Government veterinary experts a-certificate? Or is the certificate intended merely as a guarantee of superior merit? We were under the impression that the latter was the position which would be created if the Bill became law, the idea being that breeders would greatly prefer a horse' guaranteed to be sound by the Government experts. If the Bill prohibits the use of uncertificated sires, our opinion is that it is altogether too stringerit, and that Parliament will refuse to sanction legislation which would practically deprive many sire-owners of their property

by destroying the greater part of its value.If the;certificate were merely one of superior merit, the wrong to present sire-owners would not be so great, and of course under the existing law a certificate of soundness can always be obtained from a properly qualified veterinary expert if' the horse is really sound. The second part of the sentence which we quoted from the report raises another, importaut point, and as far as - we-can the adverse criticism is fully justified. It is obviously true that a horse may be perfectly sound—that is to say, it may have no disease either hereditary or otherwise —and yet it would be a conspicuous act of folly on the part of a breeder to employ it as a sire. It may be badly shaped in a multitude of ways, and may be notoriously vicious. Still, its, owner would be ■ entitled to a certificate under the terms of the Bill. We do not think much of the final objection raised by the sub-committee": —" The stringency of the measure will tend to stop the introduction of fresh blood into the colony, inasmuch as few would care to risk the possibility of having a costly animal disqualified as a consequence of some accident during importation." The objection is farfetched. The risk of accidents to horses on shipboard lias been reduced to a minimum, and extra precautions. are generally' taken in ;the. case of animals of special value. 'lf they are not taken, they ought to be,, and if an owner, suffers through ■their absence he alone or his • servants are to blame. Then agahv' the class of accidents ■ which might debar' a horse from obtaining a Government certificate of soundness are few and far betVeen; On the whole, we do not believe that if the Stud Bill became law, it would have the slightest effect in the direction of checking the importation of first-class sire horses. The result of the discussion at Saturday's meeting of the Society was the adoption of a resolution strongly condemnatory of the Bill. We should like to know whether the Timaru Agricultural and Pastoral Association are satisfied with the present conditions of horse-breeding! in New' Zealand. That can scarcely be so if even a tenth part of what his been alleged concerning ; a considerable proportion of the sire-horses in the colony be true. Many of the sires are,of very inferior 1 quality and some are suffering from hereditary unsoundness. That being the case (and we are not-aware that the Timaru Society have denied the fact) we cannot think that the curt'and sweeping' condemnation of the Bill was a wise" proceeding'. The whole subject is one in which the Society is interested, as the representative of the chief industry in the colony, and we should have been better pleased if the committee had taken a little indre time and had endeavoured tg point out the lines upon which legislation with the object of improving the breeding of horses imight advantageously proceed.