204 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
perience of taking off a big, lolloping team of rather 
under-bred horses, who are very tired, and have been 
hanging on the coachman’s hands for the last two 
or three miles of the stage, will understand what a 
pleasure and relief it is to feel the quick, sharp trot 
of a little team of fresh horses.” 
When, however, it is a question of hauling a heavy 
load, such as an omnibus, at a jog trot on level ground, 
then the big horse is required. There must be a good 
weight to throw into the collar. Moreover, when 
horses are well bred and well shaped, neither beefy 
nor leggy, but bony and muscular, they can hardly be 
too big. “A pair of fifteen-hand horses,” an English 
authority writes, “will always have to be. pulling at 
an ordinary phaeton ; whereas the same carriage seems 
to roll after a pair of 15.23’s of its own motion, leav- 
ing them light in hand, well collected, and with full 
play for their action.” 
This statement, however, is not, as might be thought, 
inconsistent with the opinion just expressed concern- 
ing the superiority of small horses as fast weight- 
pullers. They are better for this purpose, not because 
they are small, but because they usually have the rel- 
ative shortness of limb and of stride which are me- 
chanically adapted for pulling a moderate load at a 
brisk pace. When these characteristics are found in 
larger horses, as, for example, they often are in the 
Percheron family, you have animals that are capable 
of great tasks. A span of Percherons are said to have 
drawn an omnibus around a mile track in four min- 
utes; and the gray Norman-Percheron stallions that 
drew the diligence from Calais to Paris in pre-railway 
days trotted and galloped at the rate of eleven miles 
