182 ON" THE BREEDING OF HORSES. 



upright shoulders ;) large in girth ; broad loins ; sinew}^, flat legs, 

 short from knee and hock to the foot; round, (barrel;) dark good 

 sized feet are elements of beauty and usefulness to which none can 

 object. 



For the Road. A horse should be about 15 hands high, (a hand 

 being four inches,) measured from the top of the withers or shoul- 

 ders to the ground, when the horse stands naturally. His weight 

 should be about 1,000 pounds, for such weight in an animal 15 

 hands high, in moderate flesh, indicates compactness and power 

 somewhere. Experience has proved that horses of this size carry 

 their weight better on long journeys, pound their feet less on pave- 

 ments and hard roads, and are apt to be more fleet than those of a 

 larger class ; for while greater length and height will give an in- 

 creased stride, either running or trotting, the power to gather rap- 

 idly, and especially for long distances, requires much greater 

 muscular exertion in large than in small horses, from the greater 

 weight to be propelled. Our fastest racers and trotters have gen- 

 erally been from this class — Eclipse and Fashion, Ethan Allen and 

 Flora Temple, for example ; such, then, are the horses for road, 

 saddle or turf. 



The coach or family horse should be of larger class — say 15^ to 

 16| hands high, and weigh from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds. Such an- 

 imals, when combining style and beauty, command good, remuner- 

 ating prices, and it is very questionable if they are not far more 

 profitable to the breeder than the fleeter animals, which require 

 much time for training to acquire the speed necessary to command 

 high prices. The coach horse requires only gentle and perfect 

 breaking — such as the farmer can give while performing his farm 

 work— to command from $500 to $2,000 the pair. To bring a like 

 sum the road horse must show great speed — such as not one out 

 of fifty attains, even after years of training; and if time is money, 

 that consumed in training the trotter must be added to his cost. 

 To insure style, ease of action, intelligence and beauty, the coach 

 horse should have a good strain of the thorough-bred, (animals with 

 pedigrees tracing back to the English turf on part of sire and dam, 

 although a term constantly misapplied when speaking of Morgans, 

 Black Hawks, &c.,) and yet retaining enough of the cold blood to 

 give him the heavy tail, mane, &c., never possessed by the thor- 

 ough-bred horse. Our remarks about color and figure are all-im- 

 portant in the coach horse. 



