112 



THE UORSE. 



breed which is kept entirely for field or road labor, without a 

 view to being used at times for quicker work, and for purposes 

 of pleasure or travel. The same horse which ploughs or har- 

 rows to-day, is harnessed to-morrow to the sulky or the Jersey 

 wagon, or the old-fashioned New England chaise, or is used 

 under saddle, and expected to make tolerable time by the 

 owner. Nor, although Cleveland Bays, and Suffolk punches of 

 the improved breed have been imported into Massachusetts, 

 and left their mark on the horses of the Eastern States, are any 

 horses bred there without the ambition to produce something 

 beyond a mere cart-horse, aspiring to draw a heavy load at a 

 foot's-pace ; the use of oxen, which is almost entirely aban- 

 doned in England, supplying the place in the United States of 

 mere weight-haulers ; so that every horse, for the most part, 

 bred in America is, or is intended to be, in some sense, a road- 

 ster ; and it is but fair to say that for docility, temper, soundness 

 of constitution, endurance of fatigue, hardiness, surefooteduess, 

 and speed, the American roadster is not to be excelled, if 

 equalled, by any horse in the known world not purely thorough- 

 bred. 



Of roadsters, two or three families have obtained, in different 

 localities, decided and probably merited reputations for different 

 peculiar qualities ; such as the Narragansett Pacers, the families 

 known as the Morgan and Black Hawk, the Canadians, and 

 genei-ally what may be called trotters. 



No one of thege, however, it may be asserted, M-itli the 

 single exception of the Narragansetts, appears to have any real 

 claim to be held a distinctive family, or to be regarded as capa- 

 ble of transmitting its qualities in line of hereditary descent, 

 by breeding within itself, without farther crosses with higher 

 and hotter blood. 



Of the Narragansetts it is extremely difficult to speak ; for 

 there is reason to believe that as a distinct variety, with natural 

 powers of pacing, they are extinct ; and their oi'igin is, in some 

 sort, mythical and uncertain. 



The other families, it is clear, owe their merits to a remote 

 strain of thoroughblood, perhaps amounting to one-fourth, or 

 one-third part, some three or four generations back. 



Now, by all rules of breeding, based on experience and 



