1102 New York State Breeders' Association 



ceutiiated bj two centuries of development for the hot and furious 

 battles of his turf career. At the race track he is wrought up 

 to a nervous pitch that renders him almost insane. Every sense 

 is alert with an eager desire to be unrestrained, every muscle and 

 fibre is tense with the excitement of the imminent struggle, and 

 long experience in such ordeals have rendered him, as a rule, 

 fretful, irritable and frequently vicious. He is not a safe 

 horse for the farmer, much less for his boys and girls or the 

 women folks, when they want to ride or drive. 



They tell us, however, that we will subdue all this impetuosity 

 by crossing his hot blood upon that of our sluggish farm mares. 

 Concerning that claim I recently read an article written, I believe, 

 by the president of the Washington State Agricultural College, 

 which covers this point. He stated that many experiments had 

 been made in breeding thoroughbred sires to Clydesdale mares 

 with the expectation of getting the conformation and speed of the 

 former and the size of the latter, but that the usual result was 

 an animal possessing the front end of the thoroughbred and the 

 hind end of the Clydesdale. In few cases was the result anything 

 but a nondescript. 



Fortunately, we have had some opportunities for observation of 

 this process in our own state during the last few years. I have 

 already alluded to the thoroughbred stallions, which the Jockey 

 Club has placed at the service of the farmers in diiferent sections 

 of the state. Originally there were 71 of these stallions, of which 

 28 died, seven were gelded, three were returned to their owmers, 

 and eight were given to the Canadian Bureau, leaving only 25. 

 Many of them never got a mare, and many more of them that had 

 mares never got a third of them in foal, as is proved by the 

 Jockey Club's own report. The first year there were 500 foals 

 from 4,000 mares bred. Then the number fell steadily to about 

 350 last year. The oldest of this produce is now six years old. 

 I have never seen any of them myself, but from what T am in- 

 formed they are just what any intelligent breeder would expect, 

 a lot of worthless weeds of all shapes and sizes, coarse and cheap 

 all over and unfit for any purpose whatever except the wagon of 

 a peddler or a junk-dealer. A well-known deal(M' in Xew York 

 City, told mo that he had seen, judged, bouglit and sold many 



