EFFECT OF IN-BKEEI)1NG. 55 



that they have any sucli actual blood connection among them, 

 as should constitute them, in actual fact, a family. 



All that I believe, or desire to put forth, is, that there now 

 exists a peculiar type of horse of great merit for many purposes, 

 over a large district of country, subdivisible into some three or 

 four secondary classes, modified, as I should judge, by the pos- 

 session of more or less blood — I mean, of more or less thorough 

 blood of the English or American racer — yet all showing the 

 characteristics of the other English families which I have named, 

 and, I doubt not, having derived a part of their own peculiar 

 merits from each one of those families. 



I believe that the mares of all the various classes of this type, 

 from the heaviest to the lightest, are the best brood mares, by 

 many odds, of any one class that I have seen in America, from 

 which to raise stout, hardy, sound, active, and speedy stock, for 

 all practical purposes, to well-selected, large-sized, bony, tlio- 

 roughbred stallions. At any time, when the stock of heavier, 

 larger, and slower mares appear to be becoming scarce, recourse 

 should be had to powerful stallions of the native stock ; not to 

 be joined, as sires, to weakling, under-sized, higli-blooded mares, 

 in order to recuperate the race — for that they will not do — but 

 to be coupled to the finest and roomiest mares of their own class ; 

 from which union will probably result something with yet more 

 bone and less blood, in other words, coarser than either parent ; 

 and this offspring, if a colt, when castrated, will prove a capital 

 team-horse ; if a filly, will be exactly what is wanted to stint to 

 the tlioroughbred. 



This is nearly what I believe to be the history of the Morgan 

 horse, as it is styled, when it was in its first prime. That is to 

 say, I believe it to be an entirely made, or artificial, animal ; 

 made, probably, in a great degree, in this instance, by the pos- 

 sessing a small portion of one particular strain of blood. 



The perpetuation of that strain by in-breeding, or by breed- 

 ing from sires of that race, either with cold-blooded or hot-, 

 blooded mares, I know to be impossible, for the original strain 

 must go on, from generation to generation, in a scale diminuendo. 



But that the same stamp of horse can again be reproduced, 

 and rej^roduced ad infinitum, by having recourse to the same 

 system of artificial crossing which produced it, and that many 



