Annual Meeting 1075 



men careless enough to breed them, and an invariable loss ; and 

 the same to those who are foolish enough to buy them, even at the 

 pittance they pay. The common, little, plain horse has absolutely 

 no future anywhere ; any horse, to sell at all nowadays, must be at 

 least 15.2, not under 1,050 pounds, and excellent of his sort at 

 that; every extra half-inch, and every additional 50 pounds of 

 mellow, ripe, well-trained, good-looking, sound, active " horse " 

 bringing a handsome equivalent in dollars. 



No man ever bred good horses of any kind without good mares ; 

 no country ever gained a reputation for first-class equine produce 

 unless, as a rule, the native mares averaged high class of their 

 sorts. No stallion, or number of stallions, ever filled a farm, a 

 locality, or a country, with good horses, unless they had access 

 to genuine good mares. Do not let anyone fool you by saying that 

 his stallion gets good colts from anything and everything. Every 

 good colt any horse ever got had a good mare for a dam, or the 

 progeny would not have been what it proved to be. The dam's 

 excellence might not have been recognized, but she possessed it ; 

 and results proved it. I should have far more confidence in the 

 outcome in using a poor sire and really good mares, than in 

 trusting to a good sire and the average wretch sent to his harem. 



It is for just this reason that the proposed governmental enter- 

 prise of sending out, for cheap public service throughout the 

 country , some fifty thoroughbreds, trotters, " Morgans," and 

 saddle-bred horses will surely fail in producing the sort of horses 

 the farmers can use, and the army will buy. Who is to supervise 

 the sort of mares sent to these sires ? If the Government wants 

 to secure a supply of good horses to draw upon for army work, it 

 will go far on the road if it will bring about a return to the 

 farmers, for work and for breeding purposes, of the thousands of 

 big, fine mares that annually are sold in all our large cities — 

 especially New York — at almost any prices, when thin or lame 

 for temporary reasons ; or worn by city work to a point where they 

 need recuperation and rejuvenation — cannot secure it — and 

 are consequently sold for a trifle to continue their downward way 

 to the boneyard. 



Better far than broadcasting stallions would it be to buy up 

 such miares, send them to various farming and breeding localities. 



