80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



When one enters upon the production of any article for 

 sale, he should carefully consider the market, and endeavor 

 to make his production conform to the demand, in price and 

 quality. 



The farmer who breeds for sale must rear what the public 

 want, and be able to make a profit at the price his animals 

 will command, or he labors in vain. In our horse-breeding, 

 instead of producing elegant horses for the rich man's car- 

 riage, or powerful workers for the cart or plough, or quick- 

 maturing, active helpers in the busy traffic of our city life, 

 — something that can be done with certainty and profit, — 

 the chief object of the New-England breeder has been to 

 produce a horse that can be trained to a track-record in his 

 second-best gait. The occasional vast prizes of the trotting 

 world have so dazzled us, that we have overlooked sober 

 prosaic gains ; and each man has sought to breed a Lady 

 Thorne or Dexter. The man who endeavors to act intelli- 

 gently in breeding trotters, and begins by examining the 

 ground to see how he shall best accomplish his purpose, 

 is at once met with the never-ending controversy as to what 

 is the origin of the trotting-power. One powerful party, 

 strong in vested interests, contends that it is proprietary in 

 the family of horses descended from Messenger, — a thor- 

 oughbred English horse imported at the close of the last 

 century, whose precious blood, though infinitesimally diluted, 

 still asserts itself, and grows stronger the less there is of it. 



The Morgans — whose original blood was pure and strong 

 enough to found the best family of horses for general use 

 ever known in this country, but now passed by because 

 quenched in floods of cold puddle — have had enthusiastic 

 volumes written in their praise. 



One faction asserts that any family of horses trotted for a 

 few generations is liable to produce trotters, because instinct 

 is the sum of acquired habits ; and trotting, in their view, is 

 a mental, and not a physical phenomenon. 



Collateral branches of the various equine families, that are 

 reckoned as the natural heirs of the family gifts, are eagerly 

 sought as having the powers of transmission. 



Accidental horses of all sorts of lineage, both high and 

 low, constantly appear to upset these fine-drawn theories. 

 But the larger breeders are usually governed by their procliv- 



