98 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



capable of travelling and do travel easily eight or nine miles 

 an hour ; and such horses are always sought for as family 

 horses. Their temper is almost invariably good. The old 

 Society imported a few years ago a few stallions. I am sorry 

 to say that there are not as many colts scattered through the 

 State as I wish there were. One has been brought back to 

 this neighborhood, and my advice to all farmers who can do 

 so is that they raise a few colts. I have had three or four 

 gi'ade Percherons in the last five or six years, and there is 

 nothing that they have been called upon to do, whether in 

 pleasure driving, under the saddle, or in farm work, that they 

 have not done in the most satisfactory and cheerful way, 

 without a day's sickness or a day's lameness. 



Mr. Brooks of West Springfield. I can fully endorse 

 what Mr. Bowditch has said about horses. I suppose there 

 was never a breed of horses in this country that was worth 

 any more than the Morgan horse. He had style, he was 

 fast, and he would hold his own. A Morgan horse at twenty 

 years old was younger than some other horses at twelve or 

 fifteen. He was worth more really at that age, because it is 

 a characteristic of that breed of horses to hold their own 

 into years. But in those days when we thought so much of 

 the Morgan we were working oxen. There has been a good 

 deal said to-day about the value of ox teams. It is all very 

 good, and I used to delight in driving an ox team ; but in 

 these days we have to do a great deal of work with a team, 

 and do it in hot weather : that is what causes us to give up 

 our oxen. They can do a great deal in cool weather, but 

 oxen cannot do the work that we require to have done in hot 

 weather ; it will wilt them, and we cannot afibrd to pay men 

 the wages that we have to pay now to stand and wait for an 

 ox team to cool ofi". They cannot work in our machinery to 

 advantage. For these reasons we require heavier horses to 

 take the place of oxen than we wanted thirty years ago ; and 

 what the farmer wants to-day is a horse that can do his heavy 

 work, and when that is done, that can skip ofi" to town. As 

 far as I have observed the difierent breeds of horses, there is 

 nothing like the Percherou for that work. I may be a little 

 prejudiced, for after a good deal of efibrt I succeeded in get- 

 ting one of the horses imported by the old Society, and our 



