204 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



perience of taking off a big, lolloping team of rather 

 under-bred horses, who are very tired, and have beeu 

 hanging on the coachman's hands for the last two 

 or three miles of the stage, will understand what a 

 pleasure and relief it is to feel the quick, sharp trot 

 of a little team of fresh horses." 



When, however, it is a question of hauling a heavy- 

 load, such as an omnibus, at a jog trot on level ground, 

 then the big horse is required. There must be a good 

 weight to throw into the collar. Moreover, when 

 horses are well bred and well shaped, neither beefy 

 nor leggy, but bony and muscular, they can hardly be 

 too big. " A pair of fifteen-hand horses," an English 

 authority writes, "will always have to be pulling at 

 an ordinary phaeton ; whereas the same carriage seems 

 to roll after a pair of 15.2|'s of its own motion, leav- 

 ing them light in hand, well collected, and with full 

 play for their action." 



This statement, however, is not, as might be thought, 

 inconsistent with the opinion just expressed concern- 

 ing the superiority of small horses as fast weight- 

 pullers. They are better for this purpose, not because 

 they are small, but because they usually have the rel- 

 ative shortness of limb and of stride which are me- 

 chanically adapted for pulling a moderate load at a 

 brisk pace. When these characteristics are found in 

 larger horses, as, for example, they often are in the 

 Percheron family, you have animals that are capable 

 of great tasks. A span of Percherons are said to have 

 drawn an omnibus around a mile track in four min- 

 utes ; and the gray Norman-Percheron stallions that 

 drew the diligence from Calais to Paris in pre-railway 

 days trotted and galloped at the rate of eleven miles 



