880 AGRICULTUEE AND THE HOESE. 



sired color, a wislied-for aptitude to fatten, and any 

 number of such inglorious qualities which make up a 

 good beef-producer ; but to breed that delicate organi- 

 zation which makes a good milch-cow, and that nice 

 adjustment of nerves and veins, and bones and muscles, 

 which makes a really valuable horse, is not so easy. 

 Even thorough-breds vary to a degree entirely unac- 

 countable. The size varies, the color varies, the form 

 varies, the power varies, in a family bred even from one 

 sire and one dam. The success which has attended the 

 efforts of the best breeders is so small as to be truly 

 discouraging. The great English horse Eclipse, bred as 

 he was to hundreds of the best mares of his time, got 

 only three hundred and forty-four winners ; and half of 

 these never got beyond a single race. Matchem, another 

 great and victorious horse on the English turf, got but 

 three hundred and fifty - four winners. And King 

 Herod, the third king of the race-course and the stud, 

 got only four hundred and ninety-seven winners, but 

 few of which made any mark beyond their first effort. 

 What will the most enthusiastic friend of any trotting- 

 stallion known within the last thirty years tell us of 

 the trotting-capacity of his stock ? Old Black Hawk 

 stood for mares almost from the day when, a four-year- 

 old colt, he trotted down from Dover, N.H., and went 

 star-gazing into William Brown's stable-yard at Haver- 

 hill, to be purchased by this veteran landlord and 

 horseman, in connection with his friend Thurston of 

 Lowell, to the hour when he died in the comfortable 



