162 State Board of Agriculture, «fec. 



Pathfiiide]-, Rockwood and his son, General Knox, among 

 stallions ; Belle of Saratoga, Lady Sherman, Lady Litch- 

 field and Boston Queen, among mares, and m'any others 

 were their produce, and their product was excellent ; for the 

 beauty, symmetry, and general usefulness of colts bred from 

 such mares were a wonder to all. But as these old mares 

 passed away, and the stock interbred with other Black 

 Hawk stock without common maternal strains, the Black 

 Hawk predominated, standing two to one, and the results 

 were to decrease size and bone, and utterly destroy their 

 reputation, thus fastening upon us a small sized, cliubbj, 

 rugged little horse, to be sure, but degenerate and without 

 the power of recuperation, unless by slow and tedious pro- 

 cess of careful and discriminating selections of proper ani 

 male, liaving the stronger blood in common, for long series 

 of years, too long, 1 think, for Yankee patience to endure. 



With sheep in flocks of hundreds, and mares in a harem 

 of fifty or more, like Robert Bonner's or Charles Back- 

 man's, ten years' experience in breeding (I might almost 

 say one,) is more than a life time with the number of mares 

 that we individually are able to keep. M}'^ experience in 

 sheep has taught me that like does not produce like exactly, 

 but intensifies characteristics and especially peculiarities. 

 Now then, breeding small horses with small horses, or those 

 having common strains of blood of small horses, that blood 

 predominates, and the product is smaller than either of the 

 parents, and, if pursued, will go on generation after gene- 

 ration from little to less, growing finer and smaller, like the 

 Arab, the Mexican Mustang or Indian Pony. 



If breeders would provide themselves with such mares as 



