NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XII 693 
The Perche peasants are artists, sculptors who, within the limitations 
of their material, most wonderfully fashion into being their equine imag- 
inings. 
It is much easier and simpler to carve a horse of the shape you want 
on tue Parthenon frieze, than out in a lucerne pasture in the Eure-et- 
Loir district. Dazed by their artistry, the French Minister of Agricul- 
ture gravely reports: "These men of Le Perche are incredible! Com- 
mand from them a horse, they will build you one to your specifications. 
But they weren't clever enough to keep their best stallions for breed- 
ing. "Tempted beyond endurance by the incredible prices of the 
stranger," says the historian, "the country was being surely denuded of 
its most superb breeding animals." Naturally the oncoming generations 
were falling off, and then in 1885 the French government stepped in and 
began paying even more than "the incredible prices of the stranger" for 
the very best stallions raised in France. The fees charged for the services 
of these splendid government sires were fixed at ridiculously low figures — ■ 
from $3 down to $1. The owners of horses not quite good enough for the 
government stud, but too good to be exported, were subsidized at from $80 to 
$100 a year to keep their animals at home and stand them to not less 
than sixty mares a season. 
"Then," continues the chronicle, "began the American invasion, strongly 
apropos at a time when a crisis threatened ragingly over tne breeding 
industry, following on the development of railroads; and their (the 
American) apparition was a veritable mine of good fortune for Le Perche; 
but they did wrong to demand that one should make a new type of Perch- 
eron for their convenience and almost to their measurement. They paid 
prices unknown until that very moment, but they exacted enormous horses, 
and it was necessary, therefore, to construct them. Then the dapple gray 
not being to their taste, they stipulated for black. This was likewise 
done for them. What would one not do to satisfy such good clients?" 
These same good clients import about one thousand Pecheron breeding 
horses annually at an average cost of $.500, which are sold in this country 
at from $1,000 to $3,000. Fewer than two hundred mares are brought 
over each year. The peasants of Le Perche hate to sell any except barren 
mares — not because they are afraid of us as breeders, however. 
Hear the Percherographer, M. Vallee de Loncez: "The North American 
is not a veritable breeder. With the national device, 'Go ahead,' 'en 
avant,' he has not the patience, the perseverance, the consecutive series 
of ideas that are qualities necessary for breeding. He does not know how 
to wait. It is because the Yankee is not a veritable breeder that he has 
not been able to realize the dearest of his dreams: to create an American 
Percheron race superior to the French Percheron race." 
And it is true that so far American bred Percherons have never equaled 
the imported horses in our show rings. In all the big shows of the past 
dozen years, the highest an American bred has ever ranked is second; 
and even second has been rarely won. 
This is true, although the best blood of France has been imported year 
after year to breed from. In lineage the American Percheron is identical 
-with the French, but he falls behind in conformation. You can hear a 
dpze^ expLsinations for this. Perhaps the best was given by J. B. Mc- 
