122 The Book of the Horse. 



long distances, always at a trot, in their cJiar-a-bancs (the original of the wagonette), and you never 

 meet a Lorrainer in an empty wagon walking his horses ; indeed, he often trots with a load of hay 

 or straw. It is amongst the horse stock of this class, improved by crosses of English sires, that we 

 find the supplies which are becoming an important feature in the live-stock importations of England. 



Brittany has an excellent race of small, active hacks, known by the terms bidet and doubles- 

 bidets (pony and cob). 



They are active and enduring, sometimes very good-looking, and would no doubt be brought 

 to a high pitch of perfection if there were the same good understanding that usually exists 

 between our country gentlemen and the surrounding farmers. Thj Brittany double-bidet has 

 been appropriately called " the Cossack of France." They cross very successfully with small 

 English thoroughbreds. 



Unfortunately, the Bretons do not even speak French. One of the requests of the Council- 

 General (which represented Brittany) to the French Commission on Horse Supply in 1863, was for 

 a treatise on the breeding and treatment of horses, translated from French into "Breton." 



But the Breton, like his brother Celt in Wales, and like the North Devon farmer, seldom walks 

 to market if he can help it; the women never — indeed, they seem not to know how. "You meet 

 them sitting astride on a linen bag stuffed with straw, with their feet pushed hard into rope 

 stirrups, their knees as high as the pony's withers, witn a cord-bridle in one hand and a long stick 

 in the other, carrying on one arm a basket of butter covered with a clean white cloth, and with two 

 baskets of chestnuts hanging down on each side of the straw-stuffed pad. Presently come men 

 also mounted, driving before them droves of ponies as shaggy and wild as Welshmen." 



The Boulonnaise breed includes to the English eye all the cart-trotters of France — the Picard, 

 the Flamande — names and little else, distinctions without difference. In England, unless a railway 

 van-horse is a chestnut, when he may be a Suffolk, buyers and sellers have until recently ceased to 

 name carty-bred horses by the name of any district or county. From the frequent and easy inter- 

 course between the Pas de Calais and England, and by the intelligent attention of landed proprietors 

 connected with Boulogne, the horses of that country have been during the last thirty years 

 wonderfully improved. The grey cart-stallions — there was not a cart-mare in the whole city — 

 of Paris excited the admiration of our best farmers when, at the invitation of the late Emperor, 

 that city was invaded by quite an army of eminent British breeders of every kind of live stock. 



THE MULE-BREEDING POITEVIN MARE. 



This sketch of the French native breeds of horses would be incomplete without an account of 

 one which is maintained solely for the purpose of breeding mules, a pursuit which has grown in 

 the course of a century, and attained a high degree of prosperity and importance, not only with- 

 out the assistance so lavishly given to the breeding of troop-horses, but in spite of very decided 

 discouragement. The ready sale at remunerative prices for mules has outweighed all the artificial 

 encouragement and discouragement of the official studs. 



Poitou has two breeds or tribes of horses — one crossed with English blood, called Anglo- 

 Poitevin, which occasionally gives some fine carriage-horses; the other of very inferior appearance, 

 the mares of which are exclusively employed in breeding mules, and called (the words are not 

 translatable) Poitevine mulassikre. None produce such good mules as the big heavy mare of the 

 marshes of Poitou — a coarse stocky beast, with a large barrel, big bone, and hairy legs; heavy, slow, 

 and fit for nothing but to drag a load. In fact, said Jacques Bujault, a celebrated breeder of mules, 

 "imagine a big barrel, supported on four stout legs; that is the iniilassih-e, the mother of mules." 

 "Those who buy mares with two good ends, fit to sell for troopers or diligence work, if they 



