296 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



hundred and thirty-five dollars for the best stock, to one 

 hundred and seventy or two hundred dollars, and buyers 

 coming into the market during the next year for horses 

 suitable for railroad work, or for the plough, will be 

 compelled to pay something over two hundred dollars, and 

 perhaps even a higher price than that. The question of 

 breeding is, therefore, taking a new shape to the former. 

 We are getting into a position where, with intelligence, we 

 can again make the raising of horses profitable ; there are 

 those before me who can remember back to the time when 

 there was a profitable breeding of horses in New England. 

 We have the record of one family in the New England 

 States that was carefully bred in the State of Vermont, that 

 brought as much money into the State to the farmers, for a 

 period of perhaps forty or fifty years, as any other hus- 

 bandry in which they have ever been engaged, except sheep 

 husbandry. The carrying into the State of Vermont from 

 this very valley of the horse " Justin Morgan," that had in his 

 veins blood potent enough to found a ftimily (not a race, as 

 has often been alleged), was of infinite value to the people of 

 that State. 



To give you an instance of the value of that stock : In 

 1837 there was a rebellion in Canada, and the British regi- 

 ment of dragoon guards, one of the heaviest in the service, 

 was sent over ic such haste that horses were not provided 

 for it ; the men were expected to be mounted upon their 

 arrival in Canada. The horses of Canada at that time being 

 very inferior, agents of the regiment were sent into the 

 State of Vermont to buy, and in a few weeks they horsed 

 that entire regiment of dragoons with stock that the oflicers 

 considered equal to the mounts of any of the crack regi- 

 ments of England, whose horses were bought in the midland 

 counties. Many of those Morgan horses were taken by the 

 officers from Canada to England, when the regiment was 

 ordered home, and made a creditable appearance in England, 

 even in the hunting-field. But I may safely say that you 

 may go over the State of Vermont, to-day, from one end to 

 the other, and not be able to buy a respectable pair of car- 

 riage-horses. The reason is, that the people of Vermont 

 allowed that family to die out. It was not a race ; it was 



