Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 325 



we shall find to be of great importance when we come to 

 inquire into the origin of the Irish Hobby and Ewart's Celtic 

 pony (p. 18). 



The little horses of the Meuse, Moselle, and Meurthe (the 

 ancient province of Lorraine), are held by Sanson to be ' Arab ' 

 in origin. They have great toughness and endurance, though 

 ugly in shape. They are now only to be found amongst the 

 poorest people. Their decadence commenced with the intro- 

 duction of Ukraine blood in 1757, and has been aggravated by 

 the introduction since 1807 of Belgian, Percheron, and Anglo- 

 Norman blood. 



Alsace formerly possessed a breed of small horses of 'Asiatic' 

 type, but at the present day the Alsatian horses are of little 

 value 1 . 



The breeds of which we have just been speaking are all of 

 a dark colour, like the horses of North Africa and Andalusia, 

 from which they are sprung, and indeed they are commonly 

 black. But, as in Spain we found not only the pure or almost 

 pure Libyan horse of a dark colour, but also a grey breed, 

 partly Libyan and partly derived from the old European stock, 

 which still exists in Northern Spain, the land once occupied by 

 the Celtiberians, and as we have already found such a grey 

 breed in Provence, it is but natural that breeds of a similar 

 origin and colour may be found in Central France also. 



The most famous of all the French half-bred or intermediary 

 horses is the Percheron, who is as much renowned in his class 

 as the English race-horse is in his. The centre of production 

 of the Percheron is what was formerly the little province of 

 Le Perche, distributed now between the departments of Orne, 

 Sarthe, Eure-et-Loire, and Loir-et-Cher, the actual geographi- 

 cal area of the breed only covering a portion of each of these 

 departments 2 . The principal breeding centres are Mortagne, 

 Bellesme, Saint-Calais, Mont Doubleau, and Courtomer. There 

 are two kinds of Percheron, the little and the big. It is the 

 small or Percheron postier, that was so universally used for 

 posting and for coaching. The head is a little large, souvent 



1 Cuyer and Alix, op. cit. p. 617. * 2 Cuyer and Alix, op. cit. p. 640. 



