AGKICULTURE AND THE HOKSE. 419 



bellows, or a disposition to shy at a wheelbarrow or a 

 locomotive, or a dead and palpable lameness : but it 

 does require considerable judgment to discover the real 

 merit of a horse when he appears to be offered to you 

 at a price far less than he cost on the farm where he 

 was raised ; it requires a great deal of self-possession to 

 resist the prophetic story of the speed which a green 

 colt will undoubtedly develop when he begins to 

 gather up that stride which now occupies the larger 

 portion of a wide street. It is not easy for an ad- 

 mirer of the horse universal, and a careful student of 

 his characteristics and points, to look at him just as he 

 is in his entire make-up, his tout ensemble. The mind is 

 liable to be occupied with one predominant point, — 

 the last point of distinction, most likely, which marked 

 the last great trotter. Ethan Allen has a splendid 

 shoulder ; and so his admirers buy shoulders. Lady Suf- 

 folk has a powerful and symmetrical quarter ; and her 

 devotees never cease to dwell upon and deal in hind- 

 quarters. A Knox head will mislead the Knox men; 

 a Fearnaught loin will blind the Fearnaught men. And 

 so, among twenty gentlemen whom I met buying horses 

 last spring, the only one who got a really good horse 

 was the man who knew nothing about him, except t^at 

 he filled his eye. He had no imaginary faults to reject, 

 no imaginary virtues to admire. He knew no more 

 after he had looked into a horse's mouth than if he 

 had looked into a coal-scuttle. He did . not know the 

 difference between an Ethan Allen shoulder and a 



