42 THE PERCHEKON HORSE. 



middle of the night, the gray horse appeared to me more 

 easy to guide than the horse of a dark color. Finally, it 

 has always seemed to me that this coat was more becom- 

 ing than any- other the powerful form of a vigorous 

 worker. Does not a good-looking, stalwart, and honest 

 peasant please you better is he not infinitely more at 

 ease with the Gallic blouse covering his broad shoulders, 

 than under the dark folds of a fashionable coat, which 

 makes him appear awkward and abashed ? 



But everything is much changed. The country has 

 no longer any special type in the midst of all this grny 

 amalgamated with Brittany, Picardy, and Caux, of which 

 the equine stock of Perche is now composed. If the 

 Percheron should cease to be bound by this law of gray, 

 if he should become of all shades, at the same time re- 

 maining good, and such as Perche knows how to make 

 him, he would cease to be dishonored by those everlasting 

 plagiarists, shamelessly calling themselves Percherons 

 because they happen to be gray and have travelled across 

 the Perche country. If he should become of all shades, 

 in preserving the qualities and movement which are a 

 feature of everything that the tonic grasses and the fine 

 and vivifying air of Perche produces, he would not be 

 reduced to the simple role of furnishing the 6,000 or 7,000 

 horses that the omnibuses and teamsters each year require, 

 plus the 600 or 700 typical ones that foreign countries de- 

 mand of Perche. He might, little by little, contribute to 

 the satisfaction of the half-fancy and to the wants of the 

 hunting and army equipages ; he might advantageously 

 replace the German horse, which we are obliged to employ 

 in want of a better. Post-coaches no longer existing, 

 there is no longer need of gray horses for the night in the 

 midst of the darkness of the highways. Steam machinery, 

 the indispensable substitute for the lack of human hands in 

 the country, being destined to execute, in part, the labors 

 of agriculture, the horse will be less employed there, and 



