68 THE PERCHEROtf HORSE. 



daily came ungainly stock, thin, lanky, leggy, and without 

 weight in the hind-quarter, unattractive, of a difficult sale 

 when young, and proving a veritable misfortune to the 

 small farmer counting upon the sale of the colt to pay his 

 rent and having neither the place nor means to raise him. 

 This stock was, moreover, the object of another disap- 

 pointment quite as serious as the first ; rarely was a good 

 worker to be found among this burdensome race. 



Is not this tall, lank, weak, in a word this abortive 

 progeny, issue of strong and hardy parents, a strange 

 and discouraging result ? " Oh ! why is this ? " exclaimed 

 the Brittany cultivators. There was a simple reason for 

 it, of which they had not learned the value. They pro- 

 ceeded with race-horse speed in the way of crossing, and 

 gave no oats. They were ignorant of the requirements 

 of the distingue, horse ; they did not know that in the 

 sire and dam, or at least in one of them, there was circulat- 

 ing more or less English blood, which produces strange 

 results in proportion as it leaves its native place and 

 reaches a- poor country or one of hard work, and in which 

 it no longer receives the prodigal care of its native land. 



We have said that the Arab preserves indefinitely his 

 warm blood and constantly gives what he has not even 

 himself, although this truth resembles a paradox, that 

 is : a powerful appearance and a strong frame. It is not 

 the same with the English horse and his derivatives ; they 

 become thin and always degenerate. If their progeny be 

 not fed with oats without stint, they require this, and are 

 heavy eaters, like everything which comes from the north, 

 their blood grows poorer rapidly. In successive genera- 

 tions of these families, born in a dull and damp atmos- 

 phere scarcely ever visited by the sun, the legs become 

 lean and lanky. It is necessary to recur incessantly to 

 new drafts of English upon English, always expensive and 

 requiring additional care, without taking into account that 

 the result of too great an infusion of this peevish and 



