54 TfTE HORSE. 



has in its veins principally Cleveland Bay blood, M'itli some 

 cross of thorough blood, one at least, directly or indirectly, of 

 the iinj^roved English dray-horse, and not impossibly a chance 

 admixture of the Suffolk. 



And to bring this hypothesis, which, thus far, it must be 

 admitted, is in the main conjectural, to something more like fact, 

 we find that so long since as 1821 a Suffolk cart-horse stallion 

 was imported into Massachusetts by John Cotfin ; that in 1825 

 a Cleveland Bay stallion and mare, and a London dray-horse 

 stallion ; and that again in 1828, another Cleveland Bay stal- 

 lion, with two thoroughbreds. Barefoot, the St. Leger winner, 

 of 1823, and Serab, who imfortunately j) roved impotent, were 

 imported into Massachusetts by the late Admiral Sir Isaac 

 Coliin, no less distinguished for his patriotism than for his 

 eccentricity and gallantry, in the British service. 



I cannot, of course, pretend to assert that the race of the 

 animals in question are ijyso facto the descendants of these very 

 imported mares and stallions ; but when one finds, in any 

 region or district of country, a certain stock, be it of horses or 

 of neat cattle, of sheep, or even of swine, strongly showing the 

 characteristic marks of some well-known distinctive race or 

 races, and then ascertains that progenitors or progenitrixes of 

 those very races were actually introduced into that district, for 

 the avowed j)urpose of improving the native breeds, at a period 

 prior to any positive notice or description of the now existing 

 stock, he would hardly, I think, be rash in ascribing the present 

 family to the intermixture of the bloods of those ancestors in a 

 greater or lesser degree. 



This view, it must be observed, concerning the draught-horse 

 of Yermont, which I have ventured to term a family, is not 

 intended to militate against the opinions set forth above as to 

 the possibility of creating, by intermixture of bloods, a family 

 which shall reproduce itself unmixed. 



]^o such claim has been set on foot for the Vermont draught- 

 horse, although something of the kind has been attempted, con- 

 cerning a single highly-bred branch or offset, as I regard it, of 

 the general stock of the region. 



I do not even mean to assert that these horses can claim any 

 one, or more, individual family ancestors, common to all ; or 



