THE AMERICAN MULE. HI 



variation in size of their mules to be owing to the influence of 

 the dam. A finely formed, high carried, good boned Catalonian 

 jack, fourteen and a half hands high, is of more value for 

 breeding mules than a sixteen and a half hand Kentucky jack. 

 Prior to the introduction of the Catalonian blood into Kentucky, 

 the jacks in use were mere donkeys, selected for their size, and 

 perfectly devoid of quality, and the mule of that day had neither 

 size, action, nor carriage, except where he chanced to be bred 

 from a blood mare, hence blood mares were sought for as mule 

 breeders. Now when the breeder has secured a blood jack, cold 

 blooded mares are found to produce fine, gay, active, high priced 

 mules ; yet, even now, the more blood in the dam, the more 

 valuable the mule. The finest mule I ever saw was by a pure 

 Catalan jack, fourteen hands, and from a dam fifteen hands 

 high, bred from an imported Yorkshire sire. 



" The first pure-blooded Catalan jack ever brought to Ken- 

 tucky was in 1832 by the Hon. Henry Clay. His sire and dam 

 Lad been imported from Spain into Maryland, where Mam- 

 moth Warrior was foaled. Warrior, as he w^as called, was fifteen 

 hands high. Kentucky at that time had no jennies (female 

 donkeys), but mongrels, mostly a light shade of blue, with grey, 

 buff, and grizzly hair, nearly as stiff as hog bristles, generally 

 with a coloured stripe across the shoulders and down the back, 

 ewe necked, flat in the rib, low carriage, and heavy headed, 

 entirely destitute of any good quality except hardihood and 

 ability to get a living where any other animal save a goat would 

 have starved to death. With such jennies began the first effort 

 to improve the race in Kentucky, and to Warrior they flocked 

 in droves. He seemed to cross advantageously with them, just 

 as the Cashmere goat crosses on the common hairy goat. His 

 progeny seemed rapidly to lose the leading traits of their dams, 

 and to inherit in a remarkable degree the colour and outward 

 characteristics of their sire. Four years thereafter, Dr. Davis, of 

 South Carolina, imported direct from Spain the second pure jack, 

 Mammoth by name, sixteen hands high, and of great weight to 

 his height. To Mammoth was mated theyoung Warrior jennies, 

 then just maturing, thus making the second cross of pure blood, 



