128 State Board of Agricui.tuee, &(•. 



sentative Morgan stallions of Vermont have Ijeen more suc- 

 cessful, as sires of horses useful for a great variety of pur- 

 poses, when crossed upon almost all kinds, than the stallions 

 of any other breed or race of horses. To use a> phrase 

 common among breeders of horses, the blood of the Mor- 

 gan happily and successfully nicked with the blood of nearly 

 all other races or breeds of horses. And why ? One great 

 reason is, that if not always of medium size, he was a rep- 

 resentative of a medium sized race, and, therefore, when 

 crossed upon other breeds, there were no great differences 

 in size to be bridged over, and a valuable rule of the true 

 breeder was not violated ; that is : in crossing never unite 

 too great extremes in size, especially when the sire is larger 

 than the dam. And here let me mention a rule that the 

 breeder of any kind of stock will do well to heed : The 

 male of medium or less than medium size, will get stock of 

 greater uniformity and excellence than the male of larger 

 bize than the average of his breed or race. While the large 

 sire will occasionally get an offspring of unusual merit, 

 there will be a want of homogeneous quality in many oth- 

 ers, and the average of all will seldom be found very high. 

 This all breeders of experience understand, and a large sire • 

 is seldom used by them except to make some point in 

 breeding, having in view some object or improvement in the 

 future, rather than to get the bulk of the stock to be raised 

 for present profit. This, although seemingly a digression, 

 illustrates one reason for the success of the Morgan stallion 

 in crossing upon other horses. Other reasons were : he 

 was usually a compact horse, a stylish, easy traveller, with a 

 tractable, kind, but courageous disposition, and with great 



