52 HOW TO BREED A HORSE. 



tainty with whicli tlie stallions transmit to their progeny, 

 begotten on mares of a different race, their own character- 

 istics, and the high degree in which the offspring of the 

 aaares, bred to horses of superior class, retam the better 

 qualities of their dams. For it appears to be a certain rale 

 n breeding, that the purer the blood, and the higher the 

 vital energy and vigor of either parent, in the greater 

 degree does that parent transmit its properties to the 

 young — although, as before insisted upon, the certain trans- 

 missions of the larger portion of those energies is always 

 on the stallion's side, and it is only in the longer retention 

 of an inferior proportion of her qualities by the progeny 

 that the better blood of the dam can be traced when bred 

 to an inferior sire. When bred to a purer blooded stallion 

 than herself, the more pure blood the mare herself has the 

 more strongly will her own marks descend to her progeny, 

 and the less will they be altered or modified by those of 

 the sire. 



Now, the Percheron Normans are clearly a pure race 

 per se; we do not mean by the words, a thorough-bred 

 race, but a race capable of producing and reproducing 

 themselves ad infimium, unaltered, and without deterio- 

 ration of qualities, by breeding like sires to like dams, 

 without infusion of any other blood, just as is done by 

 Durham, Ayrshire, or Alderney cattle, by setters, pointers, 

 greyhounds, and, in a word, by any and all animals oi 

 distinct and perfect varieties of the same species. The 

 only remarkable thing in this case is, that such should be 

 the facts, under the circumstances, of the Percheron Nor- 

 mans, being originally — as they are beyond a doubt — the 

 produce of a cross, although a most remote cross in point 

 of time. The original Norman horse now nearly extinct, 

 which was the war-horse of the iron-clad chivalry of the 

 earliest agjea — of William the Conoueror, and Richard 



