10 DR. LEGBAR'S STOCK BOOK. 



11,000,000 in 1866 to about 16,000,000 in 1890. About this 

 time the country began to feel the approach of an impending 

 panic, money began to be scarce, and many parties who had 

 other business interests to protect found it necessary to close 

 out their horse business so as to concentrate their funds, and ac- 

 cordingly consigned their stock to the auction market. 



"The decline in prices was precipitated and intensified by the 

 fact that thousands of breeders all over the country, discouraged 

 at the outlook and influenced to some extent by the example of 

 others, unreasoning!)^, or in .some cases from absolute necessity, 

 consigned all their horses, regardless of condition or fitness for 

 sale, to the auction markets. As no one at this time was buying 

 breeding .stock, the majority of these horses sold at ruinously low 

 prices, and the very publishing of these low prices tended to keep 

 up the panic and caused almost total abandonment of the horse- 

 breeding industry. 



"To-day, the condition is abnormal, and can not long remain 

 a? it is, to-wit, good horses ready for use are already scarce and 

 bring remunerative prices in the chief markets of the country, 

 but brood mares and immature young stock, the sources from 

 which a future supply of merchantable horses must come, are 

 abandoned and almost without price. 



"With the dawn of 1897, a brighter future for the horse busi- 

 ness is already in sight. The recent sales in New York, Lexing- 

 ton and Chicago have averaged almost double the prices realized 

 in the- same markets for the .same class of stock one year ago. 



"European parties, too, are active buyers at all sales in the 

 United States now, and the recent winning of the greatest race 

 ever trotted in the old world the grand prize at St. Petersburg, 

 Eussia by an American trotting mare, will give an increased 

 impetus to the rapidly growing demand for high class American 

 horses in Europe. This is evidenced by the fact that within the 

 past ten days eighty-seven richly-bred trotting horses were sold 



