370 AGRICULTURE AND THE HORSE. 



rather equivocal class of animals, the more truly does 

 he become a trotter. I look upon him as one result of 

 that social and civil equality, which, in our own country, 

 makes one man's time as valuable as another's, and 

 which authorizes the farmer's boy to take the road from 

 the squire, or the parson, or the doctor, whenever his 

 colt can do it. Every man in this country who can keep 

 a horse wants a good one ; and, when he has got him, he 

 wants to avail himself of his horse's powers to make 

 the distance between the mill or the meeting-house and 

 his own home as short as possible. We all drive on 

 the road; and this, combined, undoubtedly, with cer- 

 tain fortunate aptitudes of climate and soil, has given 

 New England her valuable races of trotters. 



"Why should we go abroad, then, with the expecta- 

 tion of improving what we now have? While we 

 have our Messengers and Black Hawks, and other 

 families of Morgans, so diverse in size and shape, so 

 well fitted by form and temper to every labor, and yet 

 possessing a kind of prevailing uniformity, expressed 

 by the phrase ' a horse of all work,' can we hope to 

 derive any benefit from a resort to those specific breeds 

 of horses which in England are devoted each to its 

 OAvn specialty ? There is no necessity, for instance, 

 for importing a Suffolk Punch ; for half a day's search 

 would undoubtedly provide you with just such an ani- 

 mal raised on your own soil. We need not import 

 hunters ; for we have no need of any such horse 

 among us. The Cleveland Bay, valuable as a carriage- 



