SECRETARY'S REPORT. 277 



Poorc, Newelt, Lewis, and the Secretary, to attend the annual 

 meeting of the United States Agricultural Society, to bo held 

 in Washington on the 14th of January, 1857. 



At the same meeting, a committee was appointed, consisting 

 of Messrs. Bartlett, Brooks, Lewis and Page, to consider the 

 advantages and the evils connected with the exhibition and 

 trials of speed of horses in connection with the exhibitions of 

 our agricultural societies, and to report at a subsequent meet- 

 ing of the Board. At the annual meeting, held at the State 

 House on the 6th of January, 1857, this committee accordingly 

 presented the following 



R E P*0 R T : 



It would be a work of supererogation on our part to make an argu- 

 ment to prove the vast utility of the horse in almost every departmsnt 

 of business, or the propriety of his exhibition in connection with 

 other animals raised by the farmer. Nor do w^ understand that 

 serious objections are raised by any one, to the general proposition. If 

 the farmer has for sale an animal which is valuable as a draught horse, 

 there can surely be no reason why his strength and endurance should 

 not be exhibited in competition with others, as well as the powers of 

 working oxen, and no more excitement in the public mind would be 

 produced in the one case than in the other. The real evils flowing 

 from an exhibition of horses, if any, must be connected with the 

 trials of speed, and to this point we feel that the whole matter fjr us 

 to consider, is narrowed down. 



The tendencies of our age are peculiarly "fast" in all directions. 

 How much of this condition of things in general, has resulted from 

 the high speed of railroads, your committee leave to be detsrmined 

 by the moralist ; but we conceive that the prevalent taste for fast 

 horses has had its origin chiefly in this source, as he who becomes 

 accustomed to an easy speed of twenty-five or thirty miles per hour 

 in the cars, will not be long satisfied to move after the old family 

 horse at the rate of five miles in the same time, while even this 

 speed is only to be obtained, perhaps, by incessant urging. We think 

 it would be an idle dream, if any one supposed that this taste for 

 rapid driving is likely to die out. We rather believe it will increase, 

 until such improvements shall be made in the breeds of horses that a 

 speed shall be hereafter obtained, which at the present day would 

 seem to us almost fabulous. Granting that horses of great speed 

 have become one of the imperative wants of society, no efforts of the 



