228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



The Frencli stock went mostly to Canada, and from that province 

 their "blood filtered down into New England and New York. 



Blood from these various sources mingled and gave rise to local 

 breeds or sorts, differing somewhat in different localities, partly 

 because of differences of the imported blood, partly from the natural 

 conditions "of the region, and partly from the breeding. One type 

 formed in Canada, another in Vermont, and in Rhode Island we 

 had the famous Narragansett pacers, one of the few pacing breeds 

 of which we have knov/ledge. We have had many pacing horses, 

 but they have not been spoken of as breeds. This is reported to 

 have sprung from horses imported by Governor Robinson from 

 Andalusia, in Spain, crossed on the native stock of the State. 

 There is frequent mention of it during the last century, but the 

 breed (if indeed it can be called a breed) has long since run out 

 by crossing; no one seems to have cared enough for it to keep it 

 up and improve it. It died out as the taste for trotters grew. 

 The breed ran out much as the Morgan breed did, by out-crossing. 



It is only in recent times that the efforts to improve live stock 

 have been chiefly by keeping the blood pure. Down to very lately 

 the common method of improving the stock of a country has been 

 by crossing it with something else. 



The almost universal testimony of writers who visited this 

 country before the present century, is that the horses degenerated 

 in size. This is not the place to discuss all the reasons for this, 

 but the fact is undoubted; but if they lost in size, the testimony is 

 equally strong that they gained in hardiness and endurance. 



After the War of Independence, under a better condition of 

 things, pastures became better, roads better, there was more wealth, 

 more travel, and with all this a demand for better horses. The 

 English Thoroughbred, the best race horse in the world, was then 

 more abundantly brought in, partly for racing purposes and partly 

 for the general improvement of horse stock, and this blood, crossed 

 on the hardy native stock spoken of, has been the source of nearly 

 all the best roadsters of the country, and is emphatically the 

 source, so far as blood is concerned, of nearly all the improvement 

 of the last ninety years. 



For some cause the trotting gait became popular in this State 

 in the last century (a similar taste sprung up in a part of Russia 

 about the same time, and the Orloff trotter is the result). A few 

 years ago I looked through the files of the Connecticut Journal 



