RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN AND HORSES 



farmers don't want to wait for experiments, but run 

 like sheep after this or that horse that Tom Smith 

 or Billy Brown has got a colt from that either turned 

 out a trotter or brought a good figure. Regarding 

 the experiment of crossing half-bred Percheron mares 

 to thoroughbreds, Pierre Lorillard told me he tried 

 it over and over again, and recrossed the get, but 

 never got a horse worth anything. The French 

 coachers I find do not breed true, and the nearest 

 approach to a first-class carriage and farm horse sire 

 I have seen (and I have tried to look carefully into 

 the matter here and in England and Europe) is the 

 Russian trotter. They combine size, color, bone 

 (and real bone), endurance and speed, as well as ac- 

 tion. They have never, I believe, been tried as a 

 cross with our native trotting-bred (poor quality) 

 mares, but I feel sure that the result will be a good 

 one. I have spent three years among Arabs, and 

 do not believe in them much more than you do. I 

 think that with half-bred Percheron mares they might 

 produce good colts, but don't care to experiment 

 myself. There is no better stallion, of course, than 

 a horse like Mambrino King or Chimes, but such 

 horses cannot be put within the reach of the working 

 classes." 



In August, 1890, I went to Belwood, and was 

 charmed with the place and the surrounding country. 

 One of the Belwood stallions was Leopard, a gray of 

 fifteen hands, presented to General U. S. Grant by 

 the Sultan of Turkey. " What is the Arab horse? " 

 asks Mr. Rowland in a circular which I have 

 preserved. " He is the strongest and purest, the 

 oldest and best-blooded animal in the world. On 



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