174 A HISTORY OP THE PEECHERON HORSE 



brought over only stallions, and whose work was 

 purely that of dealers. While these men cannot be 

 considered to have contributed so directly to the up- 

 building of Percheron breeding as those who proved 

 their faith in horse breeding by investing capital in 

 breeding mares to be retained in their own studs, 

 their work was nevertheless extremely valuable in 

 that it placed numerous Percheron sires of merit in 

 communities where draft horse improvement was be- 

 ing earnestly sought. 



The uniformly good results obtained by crossing 

 such Percheron sires on the common stock of that 

 time created a strong demand for Percherons, made 

 possible the tremendous expansion of the following 

 period, and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars 

 into the pockets of American farmers through in- 

 creased values of colts produced. Among the men 

 of this class who were especially active prior to 1880 

 were James L. Perry of Wilmington, 111., A. W. Cook 

 of Charles City, la., Virgin & Brown of Fairbury, 

 111., Degen Bros, of Ottawa, 111., E. B. Chisholjn of 

 Elgin, 111., the Onarga Importing Co. and Euss, Mc- 

 Courtey & Slattery, both of Onarga, 111., Fullington, 

 Phellis & Co. of Irwin Station, O., the Delaware Im- 

 porting Co. of Delaware, 0., N. C. Buswell of Prince- 

 ton, 111., Dan McCarthy of Ames, la., the Marion 

 County Importing Co. of Ohio, M. D. Covell, first of 

 Ohio and later of Kansas, and numerous others scat- 

 tered over more than fifteen states. These are men- 

 tioned in the order of their importance as to number 

 imported. 



