226 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE, 
on the farm, and they are of an almost incredible 
slowness; so slow are they, in fact, that William 
Day! seems almost to be jusified in his assertion that 
agriculture in England might be revolutionized simply 
by increasing the efficiency of the farm horse. In 
that country, a team of horses and a man are consid- 
ered to have done a fair day’s work if they have 
ploughed three quarters of an acre, and more than 
this is seldom, if ever, accomplished. In the United 
States, on the other hand, the ordinary stint is about 
an acre and a half: just double what it is in England. 
Day estimates that in drawing a load of a ton the 
English farm horse walks at the rate of one mile and 
a half an hour, whereas a coach horse, in a fast coach, 
drawing exactly the same weight, (but not covering 
more than nine miles in a day,) travels at the rate of 
eleven miles an hour. A more exact comparison can 
be made with van or furniture-wagon horses. Four 
of these will travel twenty-three miles in a day, haul- 
ing six tons, at the rate of three miles per, hour: just 
double the speed of the farm horse, that draws one 
ton instead of a ton and a half, (which would be the 
share of a van horse in a team,) and goes fourteen 
miles instead of twenty-three. 
In ploughing, the cart or shire horse walks even 
slower, doing but one and one fourth miles in the 
hour, and this although the draught is estimated at 
only three and three fourths hundredweight. “Is it 
any wonder, then,” exclaims the writer whom I have 
just mentioned, “that we should so often see the poor 
creatures with staring coats and shivering with cold 
when dawdling along against this mighty draught, 
1 The Horse: how to Breed and Rear Him. 
