THE IMPORTIX(i RECORD TO 1870 155 



lion fees were liberal, reaching as high as $25, $35, 

 and even to $40 and $50 in the top register. No 

 line of live stock endeavor was so popular and at 

 the fairs big and little the owners of French horses 

 vied strenuously with one another in making dis- 

 plays of the colts and fillies begotten by their stal- 

 lions. Of course these young things were all grades. 



In New Jersey all trace of the early importations 

 was gradually swept away, the mark left by Gray 

 Billy, stallmate of Pleasant Valley Bill on the jour- 

 ney across the ocean, being perhaps the hardest to 

 efface, owing no doubt to the superior purity of his 

 blood and his prepotence as a sire. Despite the so- 

 cial and personal prominence of Gen. W. T. Walters 

 and the care and money he lavished on his Per- 

 cheron breeding venture, little benefit accrued to the 

 state of Maryland. Indeed, save that in some locali- 

 ties the weight of the native farm stock was measur- 

 ably increased, it is questionable if the equine inter- 

 ests of the commonwealth received any lasting bene- 

 fit. Much the same is true, on the best authority, 

 of the earliest importations into Virginia, and all 

 vestiges of the Kentucky importations of 1859 have 

 vanished completely. 



In Pennsylvania no doubt the war of 1861-5 swal- 

 lowed up most of the grades old enough to go to the 

 front, the state at that day being famed as the 

 breeding ground where the best big horses in the 

 Union were produced. Indubitably the heavy de- 

 mands made on the newly improved equine pos- 

 sessions of Pennsylvania for military purposes gave 



