LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 135 



pound trotter or rnnner to the 2,200 pound cart horse. But a careful exam- 

 ination of the farmers' needs shows that none of these are the best. 



There is a big place for big horses, but it isn't on the average Michigan 

 farm. Life is too short for us to await the notions of the great flabby, slug- 

 gish, spongy-boned lubber, the plodding mastodon of Europe, performing his 

 allotted round of drudgery on a soft soil, without hope or fitness for anything 

 else. Smaller teams will perform our ordinary work more quickly, easily, 

 and with less feed than these loose-made, spiritless carcasses, on limbs big 

 enough to support a meeting-house, but too often soft as Michigan bass-wood. 

 They are too slow for American tastes and habits as well as for the intelligent 

 American notion of bringing things to pass. 



The thoroughbred and high bred trotters generally lack the essential quali- 

 ties for farm work, size, and mental organization. Like the boys who go away 

 for a term or two to the town school and then come home, they are too 

 much gentlemen to work. Nervous and high strung, they waste their energy 

 in fighting against the bit, the driver, and menial service. Their finer texture 

 will not compensate fully for their lesser bulk. A dead pull of a ton or more 

 requires weight as well as muscle and nerve to move it. Farmers, like their 

 brethren in other occupations, may occasionally like a fast horse. We see 

 them every day on the road with what has been bred for a stepper — and is a 

 thing that over-reaches, or straddles behind and paddles before, or scuffs and 

 kicks up a dust, or stumbles, or holds his tail at one side or between his 

 haunches, or goes sideways, or is a fool and can't take care of himself, or has 

 a barrel head, drooping rump, rat tail, and the temper of a red headed old 

 maid, or the willfulness of a married woman with a model mind and an 

 awful appetite to wear the trousers. The ordinary farmer has no business 

 with fast horses. These should be left to the professional breeder, and the 

 Bonners, Vanderbilts, Cases, Kittsons, and Rockafellows, who have time and 

 money to spend for mere pleasure, without hope or desire for other reward. 



The farm horse must be evolved from some of the existing breeds. The 

 general farmer must know definitely what horse will best do all his farm 

 work, and then, in the light of modern scientific breeding, he can produce 

 him. What then is the ideal farm horse? The small, compact, clean-cut, 

 Avide-awake, Percheron, small sized English draft, or Clydesdale, the 

 largest and strongest thoroughbreds, hunters and trotters, if quiet, and the 

 good, old fashioned Morgan of great size will do farm work, and always sell ; 

 but none of these is the ideal farm horse. He must combine the warm, 

 courageous, enduring blood of the thoroughbred or trotter, the coolness and 

 patience of the Percheron, the solid resoluteness, docility, and intelligence of 

 the Clydesdale, and the size, style, action, and color of the Cleveland Bay. 

 He must have both the power and the will to do what is demanded of him. 

 His power will come from his physical conformation. He must be good for a 

 long day's or month's journey, or for a heavy load on a steep hill. He must be 

 able, in span, to do the plowing, haul the cord-wood, and go to mill, to church, 

 or to town at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour. With plenty of bone 

 and muscle, he must be symmetrical all over, elegant and stylish, with action 

 high and trappy, a stalwart, slinging walk of five miles an hour, and a good 

 swinging, vigorous, determined trot equal to a four minute gait. He must be 

 sixteen hands or more in height, and weigh from 1,200 to 1,400 pounds, a 

 snug, compact, heavy body, on legs not too long. A medium sized, bony 

 head, expressive, without coarseness or clubbishness, full between the eyes, 

 with straight profile, and full, bright, hazel eyes and slim pointed ears, shonld 



