THE PEECIIERON HORSE. 71 



CHAPTER IX. 



IMPROVEMENT BY MEANS OF THE STUD-BOOK. 



The Percheron breed is old enough, is propagated with 

 sufficient uniformity, and presents sufficiently marked typi- 

 cal qualities to authorize us in claiming, in favor of its 

 members, the characteristics and the title of a separate 

 and distinct breed. Consequently, a Stud-book, recording 

 its pedigrees, would not be out of place. This book 

 would have the effect of concentrating the efforts of all 

 the breeders, giving them a definite direction, and at the 

 same time it would designate stallions foreign to the race, 

 and which, up to the present time, have been presented 

 with impunity as Percherons. 



England exhibits a curious example of the influence of 

 the Stud-book in the improvement of a breed. The equine 

 and bovine races of that country, before the establishment 

 of the Stud and Herd-books, were but rudimental. 



The small number of colts of the Royal mares by East- 

 ern stallions would have been lost had they not been 

 classed together in families in a special book. 



The discovery of the value of the bull HubbacJc would 

 have been to no purpose had his descendants not been 

 classified by themselves in an authentic manner. 



For it is especially, and only, in the reproduction by 

 family that a breed is formed. Consanguinity alone can 

 form, in the beginning, a bond of cohesion and connection 

 among the descendants of the primitive families. By it, 

 alone, they acquire that great similarity of shape and 

 adaptation to particular ends, that great ancestral power, 

 which they transmit to their posterity, and which, even in 

 a commercial point of view, gives them a superior value. 



If it be permitted me for this purpose to select an ex- 

 ample within our reach among the bovine races, I would 



