HORSES. 255 



efforts must be made to procure and perpetuate a breed of 

 compact, spirited, fleet travelling horses. But perhaps some 

 one will say we have a breed ; look at our splendid Morgans. 

 Indeed ! and what are the facts ? Why, that we being the only 

 people in the world who drive large numbers of horses singly, 

 to light wagons, ought to have by far the best breed of road- 

 sters, and that we do have some individual specimens which 

 cannot be surpassed. But these are accidental exceptions, 

 and like our best native cows, are not an established breed, 

 and cannot therefore be reproduced. Our breeds are such 

 only in name. Every chunk of a horse with a little pony 

 smartness, and a heavy mane and tail, is a full-blooded Mor- 

 gan, and if of a chestnut color, Green Mountain Morgan. 

 Every good black horse is called a Black Hawk, though he 

 might with equal propriety be styled a black crow. Every 

 long-legged, rangy gray is of Messenger blood, and the rest are 

 Hambletonian, Abdallah, or something else. We Yankees 

 are never short for names ; we have grandiloquent titles 

 for our smart men, and illustrious pedigrees for our smart 

 horses. 



We can never breed horses with any certainty of success, 

 until we begin as we have with our cattle, and import such 

 varieties as have possessed for many generations those qualities 

 in which our horses are most deficient. 



The limits of this report will not permit a thorough discus- 

 sion of this subject, but this much is certain, that the deficiency 

 of our present breed as roadsters is not better color, nor form, 

 nor size, nor gait, but what is vastly more important than 

 these, viz. : spirit, courage, life, the disposition and the ability 

 to do and to endure. To obtain this, we must cross judiciously 

 with the English blood horse, so long and so purely bred as to 

 deserve the name thorough-bred. More than one thousand 

 of these horses have been imported into this country, but very 

 few into New England, and most of them have been selected 

 and kept for racing purposes. Nevertheless, nearly all of our 

 best horses contain some of this blood, and many of our fastest 

 trotters have been half or three-quarters thorough-bred. 



But again, if we would have better horses, we must not only 

 have the right breed, but we must give them better care when 

 young. In England the thorough-bred colt gets his oats every 



