SUMMARY. 83 



. In the case of Belgium it matters little, as she is a distributing 

 point for our draft horses and offers to buy our cavalry horses from us. 



It is worthy of comment that in every country where I have made 

 investigations I have invariably been told that no horses sold so 

 readily, nor brought such large prices, as high-class carriage horses. 

 Are we prepared to raise them? I answer, Yes. It is true, we will 

 not always attain perfection, but we have the best conditions for pro- 

 ducing a high-acting carriage horse of any country in the world. 

 Rich, nutritious food is very cheap, and in certain parts of the 

 United States we can develop carriage horses with assured success. 

 I have said that too much blood spoils the action. This is invariably 

 true, but in our country we have finely formed mares with good 

 action and plenty of nerve without any thoroughbred blood in their 

 veins. If we use the proper kind of large, active, fine-styled coach 

 stallions as sires and do not. succeed in producing what we want in 

 the way of a high-acting carriage horse, there are so many places for 

 the horse we will produce that we can not make a mistake. 



I would not be understood as in any sense discouraging the breeding 

 of draft horses. I have attempted to show that good ones sell in any 

 market, and where one has large, heavy draft mares they should be 

 bred to a low, blocky draft horse of good quality, and more attention 

 should be paid to quality than to size. Remember, a good draft 

 horse must be on short legs, and his bone should be clean but large 

 if he is to bring a good price. 



Those who have smaller mares would do better, in my judgment, 

 not to breed them to draft horses. It is true draft horses would 

 increase the size, which is very important, but the exact finish required 

 would be lacking, and the horse produced would not bring the price 

 he would if sired by a large, high-acting coach stallion. 



I have pointed out the faults of our horses as suggested to me by 

 European buyers, but the greatest complaint is that they are so 

 poorly broken. This is the first criticism one hears, and while I 

 am aware that we can not handle our horses as the people of Belgium 

 do theirs, we can break them better than we have done and not permit 

 them to run wild in the fields without being halter-broken until the 

 day we are to deliver them to the buyer. People in Europe are not 

 used to our method, and because a horse is wild and frightened they 

 regard him as vicious. 



Horses for racing purposes, either trotting or running, have not 

 been considered, as the demand for them in Europe is exceptional 

 and not general, and I do not regard them as the best horses for the 

 ordinary breeder to raise for export. 



It will also be observed that the prices paid for good horses in different 

 European countries are about, the same, and in each one visited I 

 made special inquiry as to .whether prices, had declined any within 

 the last five years, and learned that they remained the same with 



