FRENCH AGRICULTURE. 217 



country, with the addition of a line of trees, mostly Leech. This class of French 

 farmers, which are about the average, will have at the end of the year a little 

 balance sheet of sales about as follows : 



Six head of cattle, at an average of 1,400 pounds ; 8 head of hog;', at an aver- 

 age of 200 pounds ; 400 to 500 chickens, worth 80 cents each.; 700 to 800 pounds of 

 butter; 3 to 4 Norman draft colts, where they work mares ( for they do not keep 

 their stallions and mares on the same farm ) ; together with their wheat and fruit, 

 for there is an orchard on almost every tract of land. Such farm has more monty 

 to its credit than the average of our farms with 300 acres. When our people raise 

 corn aud hogs and pay taxes on at least one half of a 300-acre farm that is not 

 cultivated, our farmer making his land poorer, and the French farmer increasing 

 the productive quality of his land every year. The tillers of the French soil un- 

 derstand, furthermore, the importance of growing crops adapted to particular 

 qualities of land, taking into close consideration climatic influences aud weather 

 probabilities. Grapes are grown, as we know, to the highest possible perfection, 

 but entirely different in different localities and qualities of soil ; for example, the 

 finest Clarets are grown upon very few estates, such as Chateau Margaux, Chateau 

 Lafitte, and not many others. The grapes grown in Cognac are worked into 

 brandy, known as Cognac brandy. Those grown in Champagne are manufactured 

 into Champagne wine, and so on in contiuous crop, until France to-day is the rich- 

 est agricultural spot in the world, for in the month of June you may drive hun- 

 dreds of miles and feel that you are driving through a succession of parks owned 

 by private gentlemen. 



Mr. President, about twenty years ago I observed that the quality of our work 

 horses was sadly retrograding, seeing that a mania for trotters was making rajiid 

 inroads into the quality of the useful and necessary draft horses, and abi)Ut that 

 time I made my first voyage to Europe landing at Liverpool, where I saw the im- 

 mense Clydesdales and other- English draft horses that were powerful, but slow in 

 motion, and it seemed to me as much oversized as ours were undersized; but when I 

 reached Paris, L found there omnibuses on the streets of that magnificent city with 

 two Norman horses hauling from twenty to thirty pas.-*engers, at a swinging gait of 

 from eight to ten miles an hour, with no brake to be used as we do to stop such a 

 load; but this wonderful horse, known as the Norman, at the mere word of his driver 

 throws himself back into the harness, with this wonderful load behind him, which 

 he stops ms.re readily than our most improved and powerful brakes could do. In 

 starting up he is patient, true and kind, and is again soon under headway at his 

 former gait. Seeing so m»ny of these horses in Paris at various kind of works, I 

 was induced to go down into Normandy and see how they were bred and raised. 1 

 found no large estates or ranches, as we would call them, producing these wonder- 

 ful animals. On the contrary they were bred by the small farmers heretofore men- 

 tioned. It is rarely you find more than half a dozen on any one farm for sale, 

 oftener one or two only. They are put to light work by the farmer at from fifteen 

 to eighteen months old, and from the time they are two years old do the work of a 

 full grown horse. And their capacity for work, endurance, and general adaptability 

 to the demands for draft and heavy work is unequaled by any other strain of horses 

 wiihin my knowledge. And by close ob.servatioa I am thoroughly convinced that 



