THE COACHEKS. 201 



owners bragged about it. Horses of that weight 

 are expressers not coachers, and cannot be ex- 

 pected to beget the sort for which the trade pays 

 the big money. This coach horse business has 

 often been put forward as a sort of double- 

 barrelled proposition: *'Get plenty of size and 

 if you do not get a carriage horse you will get 

 a good general-purpose horse," which may be 

 all right enough in its way, but a shotgun 

 policy never yet has resulted in the production 

 of high-class animals and it never will. 



It is owing to this rather indefinite policy 

 that many failures of coach stallions to breed 

 well may be charged. Lack of suitable mares 

 also has been a grave handicap, but perhaps 

 the most potent factor of all, where a coach 

 horse has failed to give satisfaction, is the utter 

 lack of an adequate conception of what a car- 

 riage horse is which prevails very generally 

 the country over. I have known coach stal- 

 lions mated with every kind of mare from a 

 700-pound cayuse to a 1,700-pound three-cross 

 Percheron and then be roundly anathematized 

 because he failed to beget a uniform progeny. 

 It takes a mare of refinement of conformation 

 and good blood to produce a carriage horse 

 that will sell to advantage. If the desire is to 

 breed express horses, the use of the 1,600-pound 

 alleged coacher is defensible. Otherwise it is 

 not. There are exceptions to every rule, but 

 the medium-sized coach stallion is the one to 



