A LITTLE FRENCH BLOOD. 91 



sorry to say, came that cold blood, that made so many of 

 "Clay's " colts failures on the track. They were faint-hearted, 

 because they had a little too much of this French blood in 

 them. They have secured the speed, but it took another 

 cross of the "Cassius Clay" blood upon a more hardy animal 

 to make a good, lasting, enduring, powerful trotter. 



Li support of this view, you will find the best trotters all 

 along the northern sections of our country. You do not go to 

 Pennsylvania to find trotting horses. You go to Maine, New 

 Hampshire, Vermont and the northern part of New York ; and 

 Michigan to-day is busily engaged in breeding some of the 

 best trotters we have. We have learned that along the north- 

 ern latitudes, where the French blood is creeping in more or 

 less, we are pretty sure to get our trotting horses. 



I have been speaking about a horse of a superior description, 

 that brilliant animal which has just as much activity as it is 

 possible for a well-organized animal to have. That such a horse 

 can be produced here systematically, I have no more doubt 

 than I have that the thoroughbred can be systematically pro- 

 duced in England. I will agree that you cannot "gather 

 grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles." I will go as far 

 as that ; but beyond that, I am not willing to go. I do not 

 Avant to accept the idea that man has no power over the ani- 

 mal kingdom, which he undertakes to improve by cultivation. 

 I think he has, and that if we will trace the failures of breed- 

 ers to their legitimate source, we shall find that it is because 

 the breeders themselves have violated the best laws of breed- 

 ing. I think we can raise these horses with perfect success 

 here, that we do raise them continually, and that they form a 

 part of the most profitable branches of agriculture known. I 

 have in the course of my life paid to farmers in Maine and 

 New Hampshire, for four or five year old colts (and not paid 

 extravagantly, either) , enough to have purchased a desirable 

 farm. And those prizes were not accidents, but they were 

 secured because those breeders had sense enough to know 

 that they could breed a good horse just as well as they could a 

 poor one. And so we can. All those moral qualities, of fine, 

 substantial, quiet, cool nerve, that level-headedness which 

 makes a good trotting horse, that power of endurance which 

 makes a horse lasting on the road, can all be bred ; and, more 



