BREEDING OF HORSES. 295 



hope that anybody present who has questions to ask will have 

 no hesitation in interrupting me at any moment. 



As users of horses — users-ujp of horses, I might perhaps 

 say — there are no people in the world more extravagant 

 than the people of Massachusetts. We import into this 

 State a very great number from the West, and owing to the 

 improvements in agricultural machinery, we are compelled 

 to employ them upon the farm in the place of the patient ox 

 that served our fathers so faithfully in tilling the rocky and 

 hard soil of the Commonwealth. I have been, for many 

 years, a breeder of horses. There are always men with 

 favorite mares who are willing to attempt to breed colts 

 without much consideration of profit. I think I shall have 

 the whole audience with me when I say that there has never 

 been anything attempted by the farmers of the Common- 

 wealth that has been done in such a hap-hazard way, and at 

 so much loss, as the horse breeding of the past. It has not 

 reflected credit upon us as husbandmen. 



In raising horned stock, we are particular about breeds. 

 We know what we want ; knovv whether we wish to breed 

 for milk, for beef, or for butter; we are particular about 

 pedigree, and careful to keep races pure ; the State Board 

 of Agriculture has even forbidden the county societies to give 

 premiums to grade bulls under any circumstances. But in 

 the matter of horse breeding, no consideration whatever 

 seems to enter into the mind of the farmer in regard to the 

 family or race from which he is to breed. The result of this 

 careless method has been, the most heterogeneous race of ani- 

 mals, probably, that has ever been seen among men. In the 

 discouragement that has followed this lack of system, nearly 

 every farmer will tell you that he can make more money in 

 a year from any good breeding sow than he can from a mare 

 kept for the purposes of breeding. 



For the last ten years horses have been very cheap. We 

 could buy horses from the West a good deal cheaper than we 

 could raise them ; but, as I said to the few who were here 

 last night, there is a very rapid change coming over the 

 horse market that is noticed by everybody who has occasion 

 to buy. Horses for street railroad purposes have, within the 

 last }car, risen from one hundred and twenty-five or one 



