1838] 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



<ud 



serted, tliat tlie Briiisli ihorou^li-breil horse has 

 deift'iienueil within ihe last lew years, aid is no 

 loiiiTcr the t-'toiit and long-endurinir animal ihat he 

 was ill the byi^one century, partii-uiarly during the 

 last twenty years of it. VVe are inclined to he- 

 heve that "there is some truth in this. We do not 

 thiniv we have sucii tfood lour-mile horses, as they 

 are termed, as Ibrmerly, wiiich we consider easily 

 aecounteii lor. They are not wauled; very lew 

 lour mile rai'es being now run, even at New- 

 market, ill the country ; and, tliereli)re, a dillerent 

 kind ot" race-horse is sought i'nw It may, how- 

 ever, be true, that the inducenrient to train colts and 

 fillies, at a very early period of their lives, for 

 these short races, has had an injurious eH'ect on 

 their stamina, and, consequently, on the stock bred 

 from them. Formerly, a horse was wanted for a 

 liletiiiie, now he is cut up in his youth, to answer 

 tiie purjiose of perhaps but one day — a system, 

 we admif, quite at variance with the original ob- 

 ject of horse-racing, which was intended to bene- 

 fit the community, by being the means of produ- 

 cing, as well as displaying, the constitutional 

 strength of the horse in its very highest perfec- 

 tion. Another cause may have operated in ren- 

 dering thorough-bred horses less powertul than 

 they were, or less capable of enduring severe 

 latigue. During the period of high weights and 

 long courses, horses and mares were i<ept on a train- 

 ing until after they had arrived at the age of matu- 

 rity, neither did they begin to work so soon. 

 Whereas now, no sooner have they won, or run 

 well lor some of our great three-year-old stakes, 

 than they are put into the stud to produce racing 

 stock, which, perhaps, is to be used much in the 

 same manner as they themselves have been used, 

 or we should have rather said, abused. But to 

 return to the alleged alteration l()r the worse 

 in the British race-horse. VVe admit the fict, 

 that he is not so good at high weiijht over the Bea- 

 con at Newmarket, or any other tbur-mile course, 

 as liis predecessors were, whose descent was 

 closer than his to the blood of Herod and Eclipse, 

 and the deccndants of tbat cross, said to be the 

 stoutest of any Nevertheless, he is, in his pre- 

 sent Ibrm, more generally adapted to the purposes 

 to which the horse is applied. He has a shorter 

 but more active stroke in his gallop than his pre- 

 decessors had, wliich is more available to him in 

 the short races of the present time, than the deep 

 rale of Ibur-milers of old times: and he is now re- 

 quired to start quickly, and to be on his le^s, as 

 the term is, in a kw hundred yards; he is alto- 

 gether a more lively, active animal than Ibrmerly, 

 and as such, a useful animal lor more ends than 

 one. But as it is action, after all that carries 

 weight, the thorough-bred horses of this day are 

 not deficient in that respect, unless undersized: 

 and there are more thorough-bred hunters at this 

 period, and have been more for the last thirty 

 years, than we have ever known before. This 

 improvement of action also qualifif»s the full-bred 

 horse for the road; whereas, formerly not one in a 

 hundred was fit to ride off the turf. Indeed, daisy- 

 cutters and thorough-bred horses were nearly sy- 

 nonymous terms ; but at present a young lady on 

 a bit of blood is an every-day sight; and a young 

 gentleman on any thing else in the parks, or on 

 his road to the hounds, is become rather a rare 

 one. 



Vol. V— 82 



ADDkESS TO TIIK AG RICULTUUAL SOCIETY 

 OF FRICDF.KlCKSmjRO, AT TUKIR NOVKM- 



BKR mcl:ti^'G, Jiy J. M. G'arnelt, Prea't. 



Publi.-lird by rcquustof tlic Society. 



For twenty successive years wc have annually 

 commemorated, in this town the establishment 

 of our society; and it has been my good fortune, 

 with a few of our earliest members, never to have 

 been absent on any of these occasions. At each 

 such meeting, too, and in discharge of the duties 

 of the olfice with which you have so long honor- 

 ed me, I have constantly addressed you on all 

 such subjects, connected with our agricultural in- 

 terests, as appeared to me worthy of your notice* 

 Singly, perhaps, my statements and remarks may 

 often have been deemed of little or no value; but 

 it has ever been my anxious endeavor to render 

 them, as d whole, promotive of (he great cause 

 to which our mutual labors have been devoted; 

 and your constant re-appointnient of me, for so 

 long a period, to preside over your deliberations, 

 has afforded me the gratifying assurance, of your 

 undiminished confidence — at least in the sincerity 

 of my motives, and the perseverance of ray exer- 

 tions. Among my various efforts to preserve this 

 confidence, I have, for the last lew years, given 

 you the result of certain experiments — some made 

 by mj-self— some by other persons; and in con- 

 formity to this practice, I shall preface my gene- 

 ral remarks, with a {'ew details of the same kind. 



My attempts to ascertain the best varieties of 

 corn — suited to our soil and climate — have been 

 and will be continued. For although thoroughly 

 satisfied, after three years' experience, that the 

 twin corn, of which my whole crop now consists, 

 is superior in every essential quality, to all other 

 varieties yet known to me, I am not so bigoted in 

 its f ivor as to believe it impossible to find a pre- 

 lt?rable kind. Indeed, I have already heard of 

 several who condemn it; but since a large majori- 

 ty of those who have tried it, concur in its praise, 

 Icannot help suspecting that the malcontents are 

 much such doctors in farming, as some we have 

 in medicine, who make it a point to censure every 

 practice and all physic, but their own. Each 

 planter almost, in these aspiring times, has a pet 

 corn of his own, wh:ch lie most londly desires to 

 christen after his own name. The usual conse- 

 quence is, that if he is prevailed upon to make 

 any trial of others at all, he so manages as to give 

 his own scale the preponderance, and the other, 

 of course, is made to kick the beam. Althoujrh 

 this practice is certainly a most preposterous lolly, 

 and greatly impedes all agricultural improvement, 

 still if is so common, as materially to lessen the 

 value ot many of the statements we see publish- 

 ed as agricultural experiments; for we can often 

 discover, by the style and manner of the writer, 

 that he had determined before-hand, (altJiough 

 unconsciously, J how the (rial was to end. But to 

 return to my own corn experiments. 



I could procure but three varieiies in time for 

 last sprinir's planting. The first was a pale, straw- 

 colored corn; the grain small, flinty, and heavy, 

 but only eight rows on a long cob. It ripened 

 very early; but had nothing else to recommeild 

 it. The second is a yellow corn fiom Galvestoa 

 Bay, in Texas; but although its ears are much 

 larger, and the eUdks much taller than the first 



