NORMANS. 65 



error of an owner, which has allowed a colt to be deprived 

 of his sex, whose after qualities j)roved him to be emi- 

 nently worthy and preeminently adapted to become the 

 father of a noble line. Who, for instance, but must regret 

 that St. Nicholas, that noble specimen of a race -horse, 

 perhaps the best now running on American soil, should be 

 a gelding, and incapable of transmitting his blood and his 

 honors to posterity ? 



Now, the points of the peculiar breed known as the 

 Percheron Normans are these : First, they are considerably 

 taller than the Canadian horses, among which, it is be- 

 lieved, the Percheron blood is still to be found, though 

 degenerated in stature, from cold, exposure, and ill-usage. 

 Their standard is j)robably from fourteen and a half to 

 fifteen and a half hands, the latter height, however, being 

 as much above the average, perhaps, as sixteen hands is 

 above that of ordinary horses. Secondly, they are very 

 short in the saddle-place, and comparatively long below ; 

 they are well ribbed-up and round-barreled, instead of 

 having the flat sides and sway backs which are the most 

 defective points of many of the Canadians ; they have not 

 the heavy head and extremely short, thick neck of the old 

 Norman horse, and many of his descendants on this side 

 of the ocean; but, on the contrary, have the head short, 

 with the genuine Arabian breadth of brow and hollow of 

 the profile between the eyes and nostrils, which is often 

 called the basin face ; nor are their heads thicker, espec- 

 ially at the setting-on place, nor the necks, which are 

 v.'ell arched and sufficiently long, heavier or more massive 

 than corresponds well with the general stoutness of their 

 frame. Their legs are particularly short from the knees 

 and hocks downward; nor, though heavily haired, have 

 they. such shaggy fetlocks and feet as the larger Normans 

 or Canadians, while they have the unyielding, iron-like 



