The War's Toll Upon Horses

The South African war has again given the horse a dignified place among the world's things of value, but it is doubtful whether he is to be congratulated upon his rehabilitation. Though he is no longer a drug on the market, he has no brighter future before him than at any other time since the trolley car and the automobile began to crowd him off the earth. For the crowding off process continues at a rate that might well alarm the whole equine race.

Competent authorities estimate that the Boer war is killing at least 5,000 horses per month, which will account for 35,000 or 40,000 animals since the beginning of the war, not counting those used for table purposes in Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking. There is every probability that the wastage of horses will be still greater when the British penetrate farther into the Boer country. The Boers take special pains to kill the enemy's horses, because the death of a horse is almost as great a military loss as the death of a man. The climate also causes the wholesale sickness and death of the unacclimated animals.

To supply this enormous wastage the British are scouring the horse markets of the world. The war office is said to have arranged to convey 20,000 horses in twenty-three vessels from New Orleans, Buenos Ayres, and Australian ports, while at the same time a New York dispatch states that a contract has been nearly completed in that city for 80,000 more. If the war continues long enough at this rate the American horse breeders will be in clover.