132 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



sarilj beautiful to the eye are greatly mistaken. Im- 

 ported Messenger was a large, ungainly -looking horse; 

 Mambrino, his son, was badly string-halted; Abdallah, his 

 grandson, was a large, angular-looking creature, with big 

 head, scarcely any mane, ragged- hipped, and a rat-tail. 

 The Melbournes of England are lop-eared. Many of the 

 Clays, descendants of imported Bashaw, are large-headed, 

 coarse-looking horses. I have seen thirty brood-mares, 

 whose blood had flowed down to them through twenty 

 generations, absolutely untainted ; and among them all 

 there was neither a head, neck, coat, or form, more 

 beautiful than I can find in a dozen daughters of the old 

 Green-Mountain horse in Vermont. So far as beauty 

 goes, Gilford Morgan was, perhaps, the handsomest 

 horse ever seen on a parade-ground in America. Coat, 

 eye, ear, form, and style, all that man might long to see 

 in a horse, could be seen in him. One of his grand- 

 sons, Taggart's Abdallah, is the most beautiful horse I 

 have ever seen, either of the trotting or racing families. 

 Many of the descendants of the Old Morrill horse, whose 

 dams were* Morgan mares, and the sons and daughters 

 of Vermont Black Hawk, were so beautiful, as to leave 

 little, if any thing, to be desired. I do not think, there- 

 fore, that the breeder need to go outside of the trotting- 

 family to find the highest type of equine beauty. 



In another portion of this work I have given my 

 views of the Morgan stock at length ; and will only say 

 at this point, that no better cross can be made, by a 

 breeder who would breed handsome horses, than this 



