CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS, 185' 



Caget as vice-presidents ; M. Boullay-Cliauinard, secretary-treasurer. 

 These, with the ma^^or of the city of Xogeut le Eotrou, the prefect of 

 the department of Eure-et-Loir, and the prefect of Nogent le Rotrou, 

 constitntethe "board of direction" of the Soci^te Hippique Percheronne. 

 The rules for registration are very strict, and every ai)plication must be 

 sworn to, giving the genealogy as far as it can be traced, and establishing 

 beyond controversj' that the animal is " born Percheronne." Penalties 

 are provided to prevent fraudulent entries or disreputable transactions 

 generally. In short, it looks like a strong, resolute, aggressive organi- 

 zation from the start, and will mark an era in the Percheron breeding 

 business. 



I conclude, from a considerable sojourn in France, that Americans 

 who buy directly from the breeders and " stallioners " (stallion keepers) 

 of the Percheron district have heretofore had a reasonably certain 

 guarantee of purity of blood, and henceforth the assurance will be as 

 complete as can be obtained with any breed of draft horses in the world. 

 Those who buy of the dealers in Paris and in the cities on the coast can 

 have no such assurance, and their own eyes must judge of tlie breeding 

 It is to be hoped that hereafter no imported horses will be admitted to 

 registry in the Percheron-Norman stud-book of America that are not 

 previously registered in the Percheron Stud-Book of France. It would 

 have been infinitely better for the reputation of the breed, and for our 

 own horse stock, if such a regulation had been practicable and enforced 

 years ago. 



There are many most excellent horses working in the drays, trucks. 

 and omnibuses of Paris. The omnibus horses will average much lar- 

 ger than has been represented by most writers. They are usually thin 

 in flesh, and the weights, when given at all, have been with reference 

 to that condition. I stood on the street one day for an hour in company 

 with two experienced importers, watching these horses, especially with 

 a view to estimating the average size. The verdict was : average weight 

 in good flesh — fat as stallions are usually kept in America — between 

 1,400 and 1,500 pounds. These omnibuses are enormous, great double- 

 deckers, holding about sixty-five persons, and are drawn by three horses 

 harnessed abreast. Fully seventy-five per cent, of these horses are 

 white, and they nearly all have the usual Percheron characteristics* 

 M. Vidal, the Parisian horse dealer previously alluded to, told me that 

 he sold about 1,100 horses a year for use in the omnibuses; that nearly all 

 of them came from beyond Chartres in the Perche, and that the average 

 weight was about 1,400 pounds. The horses one sees in the drays are 

 larger; an average lot of imported Percheron horses is but little if any 

 better or larger than the average carthorse as seen in the streets of 

 Paris. They are massive, strong, patient fellows, and are nearly all 

 Perclierons. 



In no city that I have visited are the horses driven so hard and treated 

 so unmercifullv as in Paris. The drivers whip their horses and rush 



