THE NAME MORGAN. 121 



Still, there is not the slightest reason for attributing their 

 merits or demerits to the Justin Morgan horse, or to True 

 Briton ; nor any pretext for giving them the name of Morgan 

 horses, or for insisting that thej are, in any possible respect, a 

 distinct family. 



It may be replied to this, that Morgan is at all events only 

 a name, and that, being as good a name as any other, the 

 adoption of it can do no harm, and will serve to designate, as 

 well as any that can be devised, the style of light carriage or 

 buggy horse, which I admit to be distinctive of the region of 

 country from which they hail. 



But it is not so ; for the name, in itself false, necessarily 

 tends to inculcate a false idea and introduce a false principle 

 of breeding. 



For, if the Morgan horses were a distinct family, so widely 

 propagated as they now are, the stallions reckoned by hundreds, 

 if not by thousands, and the mares by ten times that number, 

 with no danger existing any longer of incestuous breeding, it 

 would be safe and wise to breed from them, Morgan horse into 

 Morgan mare, as one would thoroughbred into thoroughbred, 

 with a certainty that the stock would reproduce itself, with all 

 the virtues of the parents. 



^ But, as they are not a distinct family, nothing but disap- 

 pointment can result either from in-breeding, or from stintino- 

 superior mares to such stallions. Mares of this much-crossed 

 stock, well selected with a view to bone, shape, action and other 

 qualities, would undoubtedly throw valuable foals to properly 

 selected thoroughbred horses ; and I should regard them as the 

 most valuable of brood mares, where they possess sufficient size 

 and room. I cannot say that I should recommend the use of 

 the stallions, at all ; unless it be to give a cross of warmer blood 

 and higher spirit to essentially cold races, as the Canadian or 

 JSTorman. And even then I should judge them more likely to 

 transmit the inferior size produced by in-breeding, and the 

 coarser qualities of the blood, than the diluted, pure stream. 

 In a word, if I desired to give blood, I would rather go to 

 the fountain-head — and no one will, I presume, dispute that it 

 is no difficult task to find hoi-ses, of the purest thorough blood, 

 of heavier bone, larger muscle, and greater points of size and 



