PEECHERON HORSES. 101 



domesticity that was such a marked feature of the ]Morgan 

 horse. It is one of my particular hobbies that the Morgan 

 horse, descended from the single horse, Justin JNIorgan, that 

 took his start in West Springfield about half a century before 

 Mr. Brooks started there, was descended from that Arabian 

 horse that was kept in Connecticut prior to the Revolution- 

 ary war, and was bought by General Lee of the Provincial 

 Army, under the direction of General Washington, and was 

 taken from Connecticut to Virginia, where his blood became 

 mingled in the pedigrees of several of our thoroughbred 

 lines. That Arab left his blood there in the valley around 

 West Springfield, and in my opinion the quality and charac- 

 ter of the Morgan horses must have been taken from that 

 strong line of Arab blood there in the Connecticut valley, 

 and it lasted almost a century. It is all gone now. When 

 people talk about a INIorgan horse to-day, they are talldng 

 about something that cannot possibly exist. There is no 

 more a Morgan to-day than there is an original Smith 

 (laughter) ; the name and blood have been crossed with all 

 other families, so that the blood itself has been infinitesimally 

 subdivided, and they are just like other people ; and so the 

 Morgan horses are just like any other horses, with no special 

 Morgan about them. 



The Percheron horse has been bred in France by constant 

 infusions of the Eastern blood, — the Arab. He has the fine 

 mental qualities that have distinguished the Arab horses in 

 all ages. This domesticity, docility and adaptability to all 

 the purposes of man that the Percheron shows in such a 

 marked degree, he holds in common with the Morgan horses, 

 that were the pride of the New England people when I was 

 a boy. There is one trouble about breeding Percheron grade 

 horses for sale. They are almost invariably gray, and when 

 any man tells you that they will be of any other color, he is 

 predicting what is very unlikely. In the last century it was 

 necessary to have gray horses. You will ask why it was 

 necessary to have gray horses. It was because all the conti- 

 nent of Europe was travelled l)y post horses ; men travelled 

 by night in post chaises, and the horses were ridden by pos- 

 tilions, and the traveller in the night, sitting back in his 

 coach, riding long journeys over rough roads, liked (o see a 



