60 A HISTORY OP THE PERCHEEON HORSE 



however, whose mares are only suitable for either 

 heavy cavalry or draft purposes, would like to find 

 at the depot of Blois, enough stallions analogous to 

 the heavy type of mares found in the said region; 

 in default of which the farmers will procure stallions 

 to serve their mares wherever they can, in many 

 cases sires which serve a great number of mares, 

 because the service fees of these stallions are inferior 

 to those charged by the government. 



"The liberty of owning a stallion or recurring to 

 that of one's neighbour cannot textually be de- 

 stroyed ; therefore it is necessary to combat this state 

 of things by competition, and it is only by offering 

 to the said canton, eminently suitable for horse 

 breeding, sufficient stallions appropriate for its par- ' 

 ticular class of mares and at the regular service fee 

 obtaining in the region, that one can succeed in de- 

 stroying the custom which has given rise to the 

 necessity . . . etc." 



Unverified Tradition Exploded. — Whether the 

 horses captured at the battle of Tours from the 

 Saracens furnished the basis of horse-breeding in 

 The Perche or not none can say. That the Crusaders 

 brought back Arabian stallions from Palestine to 

 The Perche is a fairly reasonable assumption, al- 

 though there seem to be no authentic records to that 

 effect. That the gray and white chargers popular 

 in France during the Middle Ages probably carried 

 Oriental blood is of course possible. We now come, 

 however, to a comparatively recent phase of the 

 Arabian proposition which seems to demand special 

 attention. We refer to the commonly-accepted state- 

 ment that the modem Percheron owes not only a 

 great part of his excellence, but the gray color as 



