LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 14] 



and Messengers, and Clays, and Hambletonians, and Bashaws, and Mer- 

 rills, and Patchens have been the serviceable farm and family horses ; but 

 they have lacked size ; to get this in uniformity and retain their other excel- 

 lencies is the farmer's problem, and needs careful breeding and consider- 

 able time. Breed carefully for this purpose, and don't forget to breed for 

 brains. The horse that is a coward or fool is good for only a Paris restaurant. 

 You will occasionally blunder into rearing a genuine trotter, but it won't 

 hurt your reputation a bit nor lessen the animal's value. You can prepare this 

 kind of horses for market yourself. No need of humbug trainers, humbug 

 speed accelerators, and stables lined with sweating clothes, boots, straps, and 

 toe weights. 



Kevolutions do not go backward. The farmer has caught the spirit of this 

 age of progress and improvement, and he too is going forward. The vine- 

 yard, the orchard, the garden, the drained fields, the stall, the sheep fold, the 

 dairy, the sugar, all attest his enterprise. A little while ago the Concord 

 grape, Jonathan apple. Merino sheep, Durham, Holstein, and Hereford cattle, 

 and the amber cane were things unknown to him, yet he was contented. 

 Now, stimulated by these acquisitions, he is seeking other conquests. The 

 western industrial press, and the western industrial colleges are giving him 

 sound practical instruction and sending him sound practical leaders, and 

 practical workers. He cannot much longer fail to see that in a main source of 

 his pleasure and recreation, and the profit of his toils, he is inflicting on him- 

 self losses and annoyances by sheer neglect. Every mile he travels, every 

 load he draws, every rod of soil he cultivates testifies to the need of better 

 farm horses; nineteen-twentieths of the horses in the land are used for work, 

 and nineteen-twentieths of the ardor and effort for improvement are expended 

 on the sporting horse. In these is constant improvement and development, 

 while the ordinary farm horse is little better than he was forty years ago, and 

 this little is fortuitous. When the farmer gives as much thought and effort 

 to raising a farm horse that is to be the constant companion of his toil and 

 the chief producer of his income, as the sporting-man does to raise the colt 

 that for a few minutes a day, occasionally shall contribute to his pleasure or 

 his gains, there will be the same improvement. Within a dozen years he will 

 do this; and within two or three dozen years more the American farm horse 

 will be the best horse on the globe. 



HIGH BREEDING OF HORSES. 



BY JOHN M. MATHEWSON. 

 [Read at Grand Rapids Institute.] 



The importance of high breeding is a subject intimately blended with the 

 spirit of this fleet and progressive age. It is now receiving more attention 

 than formerly. The thoughtful and learned are turning their attention to it. 

 And perhaps there is no subject of like importance to the individual and 

 nation that has been so generally neglected and so little understood. 



All understand and agree that if it will pay to raise an animal, it will be the 

 more remunerative to raise the best. Yet how many continue to breed and 

 raise those that are comparatively worthless, when with care and thought 



