170 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



mares brought good foals from any good horse, (a truth powerfully shown by 

 Pocahontas in England and Reel in the south,) they would doubtless breed 

 better if confined to one stallion ; and, under the. same circumstances of treat- 

 ment and health, each colt would be an improvement upon his predecessor. 

 As a matter of course, the first foal should show that th<; blood of the stallion 

 nicks with that of the mare. 



The Texans have claimed that their native horse — the mustang — probably 

 the degenerate descendant of the Spanish barb, spoiled by the errors of the 

 Mexicans and the absence of a test like the race coarse, was better suited to 

 that region than our best stock. Common horses of mixed blood, taken there 

 during the war with Mexico, failed to become acclimated, and shortly after 

 their arrival died of Spanish fever or some other disease. The experiment of 

 taking thorough-breds to Texas Avas afterwards tried and with the happiest 

 results. As a matter of course, they took the disease of the country, but in a 

 mild form, and all recovered ; and thereafter proved infinitely superior to any 

 mustang for vigor, speed, and endurance, being able to travel one-third further 

 per diem and with less fatigue. This in a country where riding on horseback 

 is the only means of prosecuting a journey, and all horses are used to the saddle. 



This result goes strongly to prove the superior physical superiority of the 

 purely bred animal. His blood is free from hereditary taint, and his pulse 



f)erc(ptibly quicker than that of the common horse ; qualities Avhich render him 

 ess liable to contract disease, and better capable of throwing it off when con- 

 tracted. His singular elasticity of temperament as well as of bodily construc- 

 tion enable him when once acclimated to vanquish without effort the mustang 

 upon his native soil. An en-oncous idea concerning the thorough-bred prevails, 

 that, being delicate and slender in appearance, his legs are not so strong as 

 those of the heavy farm hoise or roadsl^er. This is an egregious error. The 

 English farmers, desirous of improving and converting their horses into showv 

 hacks, have bred common animals with weedy blood stallions, discarded from 

 the turf on account of weakness in the legs. These weeds have reproduced 

 their infirmities in their foah — as the well-known Cobweb, for example, trans- 

 mitted a tendency to navicular disease to all her colts — while their virtues have 

 been swallowed up by the gross blood of the mare. Thus blood stock fell 

 into disfavor for jiractical service in breeding road horses, but, happily, the 

 error is being dispelled, and the more enterprising farmers are eeekirg to im- 

 prove their stables by the use of as many scions of ancient lineage as they can 

 procure. The legs of the thoiough-brcd, indeed, are a marvel of mechanical 

 strength. Fancy a body weighing from nine hundred to eleven hundred 

 pounds flying through the air at the rate of thirty -five miles an hour, and 

 striking the gi'ound at rapid strides of from twenty-two to twenty-seven feet in 

 length ! Can any one imagine that this may be done without great strength of 

 limb ] Suppose a locomotive engine, ever so strongly built, of the same weight, 

 going at the same speed, could be made to progress by leaps of twenty or 

 thirty feet, how long would either rail or engine last ? Hardly so long as a 

 thorough-bred racer. The best trotting horses — the highest type of the mon- 

 grel — get lame during the trotting season without one-half such trials as the 

 racers undergo ; and were it not for the dash of choice blood that flows in their 

 veins, it would be found, after a trot, that literally and metaphorically " they 

 had not a leg to stand upon." The reason why heavy farm horses do not get 

 lame so often as racers and hunters is because they do nothing to make them 

 lame. Their weight is their great virtue. All they do is to lean forward iu 

 the collar and draw by sheer dead weight. Put them to the test the racer 

 must undergo and their legs would soon be sorry spectacles. " An ounce of 

 blood is worth a pound of bone." Nor can they carry so heavy a weight as 

 the racers. Fair Kell, the Irish mare that first beat the Arabians on desert 

 sand, was accustomed to hunting with a rider of two hundred pounds weight ; 



