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IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



English Stud Book took its present form. The stud for American thor- 

 oughbreds was established in 1868. The leading throughbreds imported 

 to this country at an early day were Precipitate, Priam, Diomed, Trustee 



and Glencoe. 



Cliaracteristics. — The thoroughbred has been developed to run fast 



and has all the requirements of form, quality, ambition and endurance 

 for that purpose. The common colors are bay, brown and chestnut. A 

 typical specimen of the breed should stand 16 hands high, have a clean- 

 cut, refined make-up, long, graceful neck, deep chest, long body with 

 well sprung ribs, strong loins, straight croup, long thighs and 

 sloping springy pasterns, fine "gun metal" bone, clean, firm muscles, 

 active, high-strung temperament. 



TYPICAL THOROUGHBRED STALLION. 



Utility. — Owing to long continued breeding in a right line prepotency 

 has become so thoroughly fixed that the thoroughbred stamps his breed 

 and individual character upon his offspring with marked fidelity. Mated 

 with suitable mares his progeny is suitable for road, carriage and saddle 

 work and such mating of ten to twelve hundred pound trotting mares, 

 that do not possess notable speed, would be likely to produce offspring 

 of considerable value for one or other of the purposes mentioned. The 

 thoroughbred has been used in the formation of our coach breeds, the 

 American trotter and the American saddler. He is now little used in the 



