588 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc, 



situation iudividually. In most sections of the Eastern states the 

 ehief motive for keeping stallions comes from the patronage of men 

 wiio breed horses for pleasure and sport. I am not condemning this 

 situation, but it fails in many cases to meet the farmer's real needs, 

 although doubtless he too often breeds to these stallions through 

 the same sporting instinct. 



If breeding of the draft horses is to be started in a section not 

 heretofore breeding them it should be done by co-operative eifort. 

 The farmers of a section should thoroughly canvass the situation 

 as to the desirability of the project for their particular territory. If 

 it is deemed desirable, they should enter into an agreement to breed 

 draft horses for at least ten years. Then they should secure a stal- 

 lion by co-operative effort, not for the purpose primarily of profit 

 from service fees but to make sure of a consistent line of breeding. 

 Unless a neighborhood can enter into the business systematically 

 and thus make itself the center for high class horses, it had better 

 turn its attention to some other business. It must be remembered, 

 also, that unless the neighborhood already has high class draft 

 mares, it will be several generations before the progeny can com- 

 pete with Western draft horses. If a farmer were assured that for 

 ten years he would have a draft stallion at his service, there would 

 be some incentive to secure high class draft mares. At present no 

 such incentive exists. 



Leaving now for your discussion the possibility and propriety of 

 breeding draft horses in the North Atlantic states and particularly 

 in your own State, let us turn to the question of the conformation 

 of the draft horses. And before proceeding to discuss the draft 

 horse as he actually exists in the United States, permit me to pre- 

 sent some theoretical considerations which should guide those who 

 develop the draft type. For greater ease in following the discus- 

 sion, I hand you a score card used in teaching students to become 

 acquainted with and to judge the different types of horses. 



Horses are used either for force or for speed, or for both. In 

 every horse, both motion and power are essential but in varying 

 degrees. The thoroughbred and the modern trotter hitched to a 

 pneumatic tire sulky are types of the horse used for speed almost 

 exclusively, while the Shire and the Boulonnais are types in which 

 speed in largely subordinated. 



The horse, or other animal, is a complicated system of bones, 

 which act as levers and to which power is transmitted through the 

 muscles. The well-known principle of physics that ''force cannot 

 be gained without loss of speed and that speed cannot be gained 

 without loss of force," applies equally to the leg of a horse and the 

 drive wheel of an engine. While we may have a fair degree of both 

 force and speed in one animal, we cannot have extreme speed with- 

 out some loss of force, nor great force without some loss of speed. 



If we could have a horse rigid and suspended from the back by 

 a string, we would find a point where the horse would balance. If 

 we should again suspend him from the breast and also from the 

 side, we should find two other such points. The point at 

 which these three lines would meet would be the horse's center 

 of gravity. The more stable the horse, the greater the force; the 

 less stable the horse, the greater the speed. The lower the center 



