300 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



dation of all equine excellence, and a considerable part of 

 this spoil of horses was awarded to the knights of a part of 

 France then known as Perche, now not known by that name 

 as a department. It is the southern part of Normandy, one 

 of the two departments bordering on the Loire. That was 

 not the end of it. The excellence of those horses was so 

 quickly seen by the knights of France, — for a man's life then 

 depended not more upon his arm than upon his horse, — that, 

 in the succeeding crusades, they brought back great numbers 

 of both stallions and mares, and the whole of France was 

 filled with Eastern blood. That has been continued until a 

 race has been established, a composite race, continually 

 re-inforced either by crossing with the English thorough- 

 bred to refine the character of the race, or else by direct 

 importations from Syria. When I was in France, six or 

 seven years ago, there were Arab stallions, small horses, to 

 be sure, but brought from the very source of the blood itself 

 into the Perche district. They were standing there for 

 mares, and I have no doubt that subsequent re-inforcements 

 of Eastern blood have been made. The farmers of all that 

 district are breeders of these horses. They breed them of 

 three sizes. They are something like Yorkshire pigs in that 

 particular — there is the small, the intermediate, and the 

 larg-e. Heretofore, when we have brouo'ht a Percheron 

 horse to New England, we have had a horse that was 

 too large, — one of the cart-horses of France. What we 

 want is a cross of the smaller Percheron and the animals we 

 have in this country, and I am glad that the superior judg- 

 ment of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture has 

 brouofht here some of the intermediate stock, that are about 

 the right weight to be coupled with our ordinary mares. I 

 regard it as a mistake to bring horses here to cross with any 

 of our mares that are over sixteen hands high. The horses 

 of the Society are sixteen hands high, and weigh between 

 twelve and thirteen hundred pounds, well made all over. 



The progeny of these horses are almost certain to be gray. 

 Gray is unfashionable in this country, but I have yet to 

 learn that a good horse was ever of a bad color. Gray is 

 easily taken care of; it goes with a healthy, tine skin, and 

 good hair. It is, also, in the case of these horses, an indica- 



