BREBDS OF HORSES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 143 



ribbed-up, with lean bony heads, wide between the eyes, and otherwiso 

 well shaped, very muscular, with coarse bushy manes and tails. They are 

 gentle and easily trained ; and it is said that some of them are capable of 

 canying a light man forty miles between sunrise and sunset. 



The Mustang. — The Mustangs are undersized and not handsome ; de- 

 scended from horses gone wild after escaping from the early Spanish ad- 

 venturers, they have degenerated owing to the scanty fare and hard usage 

 received at the hands of their Indian masters. They are of various colors, as 

 are all the semi-wild horses of Texas and Mexico. The Indian ponies found 

 in the West are undoubtedly of the same origin as the Canadian pony. 

 They are pure, but modified, Norman, escaped from domestication and 

 bred in a half wild state by the Indians of the Northwestern States and 

 Territories. They arelarger and heavier than the Indian horse or Mustang 

 of the Southwestern plains and are in every way superior animals. Some- 

 times they are fom-teen hands high, but the average is about thirteen 

 hands. They are compact, closely ribbed, stout, muscular, couragous 

 little fellows, docile and sagacious in the extreme, with wavy tails, and 

 shaggy manes falling on both sides of the neck. If carefully bred in high 

 northern latitudes, and well-trained, they would make admirable chil- 

 dren's ponies and would readily sell for large prices to the wealthy. 



XVI. The Vermont Draft Horse. 



TWs is another breed of horses of most admirable qualities, specimens 

 of which are now very rare, probably because their use in cities has been 

 superseded by the introduction of the Percheron, Clydesdale and other 

 heavier animals. The Vermont draft horses would weigh from 1,150 to 

 1,200 pounds ; of fine breeding, clean-limbed, handsome, muscular, with 

 fine crests, capable of drawing heavy loads at a good pace, they were 

 in the days preceding the advent of the locomotive, the crack horses of 

 the stage companies of the Northern New England States. As cavalry 

 horses, they were said to have no superior, since they moved with speed, 

 alertness, and with great force and power by reason of their weight. It 

 is to be hoped that we may find, in the Cleveland Bay and his crosses, 

 as good an animal of all work, both for saddle and harness. 



XVII. The Narragansett Pacer. 



Here is another of the extinct races of American horses, one that is 

 said to have originated in Rhode Island, from an Andalusian stallion 

 brought from Spain at an early day. They were largely raised, during 

 the last century and the first part of the present century, for exportation 

 to the West India Islands for the use of the families of the planters. 

 Their only gait was a pace of the most perfect and easy-going descrip- 

 tion. They are reputed to have been so easy-going that ladies could ride 



