CHAPTER V. 



HOW TO BREED A HORSE NORMAN BLOOD. 



ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE PERCHEROX NORMAN — A PURE RACE—CHA- 

 RACTERISTICS AND POINTS— IMPORTATION INTO THIS COUNTRY. 



In the preceding chapters on this subject, we have had 

 occasion to speak of the Percheron Norman horse, some of 

 which breed have been within a few years, comparatively 

 speaking, introduced into this country ; and, believing that 

 the knowledge of this race at all, and still more of its ex- 

 istence in the United States, is confined to a small number 

 of persons, and for the most part to a single locality, we 

 have thought it would be not uninteresting to our agricul- 

 tural readers to give a brief account of the animal, its 

 derivation, its importation into this country, and of the 

 benefits which are, we fully believe, to be derived from its 

 employment. In the first place, then, Le Perche is a dis- 

 trict of that portion of France which was formerly known 

 as Kormandy, in which the breed of the Norman horses 

 has been most highly cultivated, and exists in its most 

 perfect form and improved condition. Indeed, by some 

 means somewhat anomalous, and at variance with the gen- 

 eral experience and principles of breeding, this breed, 

 which must in its origin have been a cross, has, in the 

 process of many ages, become a family perfect in itself, 

 capable of transmitting its qualities and reproducing itself, 

 like to like, without any loss of energies or characteristics 

 by breeding mares and stallions of the same race together. 

 The remarkable purity of the race is attested by the cer- 



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