BREEDING OF HORSES. 299 



dollars for service, Ave would get horses that would be 

 creditable to us as breeders. The chance of doing it is as 

 a bucket of water to the broad Atlantic. The fanners have 

 been led to believe that by breeding their poor stock to 

 high-priced "trotting" stallions they could produce some- 

 thing that, in the hands of a horse-puller, with the addition 

 of what is called "development" and "training," toe- 

 weights, etc., they could be sold for a high price. There is 

 not a farmer living in Massachusetts to-day that has over 

 realized anything like the cost of any animal bred with that 

 notion. 



Now, the horses of the Massachusetts Society are stand- 

 ing in the parts of the State indicated in these bills ; all in 

 convenient parts of the State, and the fee for their service 

 is placed at fifteen dollars. That is the old-fashioned fee, 

 such as was charged when I was a boy, when Silas Hale of 

 Royalston, in his white frock, used to lead out " Green 

 Mountain Morgan" in front of the common, to the delight 

 of the whole neighborhood. I will say, in reference to that 

 horse, that it was one of the finest little horses that ever 

 stood on iron. He fills my eye to this day as one of the 

 noblest specimens of a small horse that ever was raised any- 

 where. I wish we had thousands of just such, only it would 

 be better if we had them all castrated, instead of getting 

 little colts, as he did ; but he himself was a very fine horse. 

 Question. Tell us something about the breeding of the 

 Percherons. 



The French claim that they are the oldest race in the 

 world. As long ago as the eighth century there was an 

 invasion of France by the Moors. It was the time of the 

 Mohammedan conquest of a considerable part of Europe. 

 An army of one hundred and fifty thousand or two hundred 

 thousand men, with a great equipment of horses, passed 

 over the Pyrenees to the centre of France, where they 

 were met on the plains of Touraine by Charles Martel, 

 and there their power was broken, their camps taken, and 

 the whole of this splendid ecjuipment was distributed over 

 France by the conquerors. The result of that was to bring 

 into France at thiit time a great number of the very best 

 horses of Arabia, the highest type of horse, the very foun- 



