226 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



on the farm, and they are of an almost incredible 

 slowness ; so slow are they, in fact, that William 

 Day 1 seems almost to be jusified in his assertion that 

 agriculture in England might be revolutionized simply 

 by increasing the efficiency of the farm horse. In 

 that country, a team of horses and a man are consid- 

 ered to have done a fair day's work if they have 

 ploughed three quarters of an acre, and more than 

 this is seldom, if ever, accomplished. In the United 

 States, on the other hand, the ordinary stint is about 

 an acre and a half: just double what it is in England. 

 Day estimates that in drawing a load of a ton the 

 English farm horse walks at the rate of one mile and 

 a half an hour, whereas a coach horse, in a fast coach, 

 drawing exactly the same weight, (but not covering 

 more than nine miles in a day,) travels at the rate of 

 eleven miles an hour. A more exact comparison can 

 be made with van or furniture-wagon horses. Four 

 of these will travel twenty -three miles in a day, haul- 

 ing six tons, at the rate of three miles per hour : just 

 double the speed of the farm horse, that draws one 

 ton instead of a ton and a half, (which would be the 

 share of a van horse in a team,) and goes fourteen 

 miles instead of twenty-three. 



In ploughing, the cart or shire horse walks even 

 slower, doing but one and one fourth miles in the 

 hour, and this although the draught is estimated at 

 only three and three fourths hundredweight. " Is it 

 any wonder, then," exclaims the writer whom I have 

 just mentioned, " that we should so often see the poor 

 creatures with staring coats and shivering with cold 

 when dawdling along against this mighty draught, 



1 The Horse : how to Breed and Rear Him. 



