carried out in stock breeding and other problems effecting farming 

 industries. • 



(3) Educational centers for young men and Bureaus of In- 

 formation for the older inhabitants."' 



This colony then possessed 103,731 horses, part of it was of the 

 original stock and part of it was largely imported from the Cape 

 Colony and Natal as well as from other parts of the world. From 

 time to time stallions were obtained from the neighboring districts 

 of the Cape Colony and there is reason to believe that many of the 

 imported Thoroughbreds of fame found their way in the pre-war 

 days. The famous stallion Turpin is an example of this. He was 

 later sold to a Natal farmer."" Champagne Charlie or rather liis 

 progeny was a household word in the Boshof district. Good sires 

 were also obtained from the large studs in the Colony and Free 

 State breeders were proud to possess a "Hantam", "van Zyl", 

 ' ' Kotze " or " Oosthuizen ' ' bred stallion or pair. 



There is a very interesting "talk" in the first volume of the 

 Natal Agricultural Journal of 1898 by Mr. Charles Barter, one of 

 the first horse-breeders in that Colony. His remarks are very val- 

 uable as they give us a view of the state of affairs immediately before 

 the war and something about the origin and development of horse- 

 breeding in Natal. "Natal has proved itself a fit home for the 

 Thoroughbred and certainly less adapted to the coarser equine 

 breeds. Let us then foUov/ nature. Let us leave heavy draught to 

 the railroad and traction engine and the most longsuffering of crea- 

 tures the trekox ; and in breeding horses for draught let us try to 

 make compactness of form, symmetry, sound limbs and feet and sup- 

 ple action supply the absence of weight and bulk. ' ' 



Mr. Barter's people owned the first Thoroughbred imported 

 into Natal in 1860; and remarks that there were few good horses 

 like Mortimer in the colony, because the old-colony breeders who 

 known the value of a really good horse and is generally willing to 

 pay for it gets the benefit of our good judgement and luck and thus 

 a chance of real improvement such as may not be offered again for 

 many years is lost to the colony, or at least to the present gener- 

 ation. ' ' 



Tables were, however, turned and after the Cape Colony be- 



(99) First Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Orange 



Siver Colony (1904-5). 



(100) Natal Agricultural Journal Vol. VII, 1904. 



54 



