HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 429 
come. It is a most important thing. Tak : 
horse of the mountain States out hee: Ben SeRne Doge seen 
_He is first class, with splendid legs and great courage, but is not big 
enough for a cavalry horse, and if they have forage to carry on the 
growth of the colts the first and second winter and make them three 
or four hundredweight heavier, they might supply the armies of 
i : ’ ay g PPly 
Europe with their mounts. The mountain States have not studied 
those questions sufficiently. We are getting crops for them that they 
never grew before; we are hunting the world all over to find them 
such things; and I can help them along those lines if you give us gen- 
erous amounts in the Bureau of Animal Industry. 
The CuartxmMan. Would not that come under the Bureau of Plant 
Industry. 
Secretary Wirson. The Bureau of Plant Industry is at work, you 
know, establishing the plants. The question now is the feeding in 
actual experimentations. 
The Cuarrman. Those experiments ought to be made through the 
eee stations. 
ecretary Wiison. Surely; but they would like to have us cooper- 
ate with them. 
The CHairman. It is the same cooperation you give the others? 
Secretary Wiison. Yes; and I can help them through Doctor Sal- 
mon’s bureau. We can do that. 
There is another matter I want to call your attention to—I am speak- 
ing mostly to-day of the policy of the Department—if you notice, the 
American people have never produced a breed of animals, except they 
have transformed a running horse intoa trotting horse; and they have 
produced a large hog. There may be a breed of chickens that we have 
established somewhere in the United States, but, if you think a moment, 
we import the heavy horse and the light horse for Florida, for Vir- 
ginia, for lowa, and Minnesota, and we keep them pure. 
We import the heavy shorthorn and the little Jersey for the North 
and the South and for the East and the West, and take good care to 
keep them pure. Weimport sheep from the fine-wool Spanish Merino 
to the great big Leicester and keep them pure; and keep them in the 
North and keep them in the South. Those animals are the product 
of intelligent breeding from the localities from which they were pro- 
duced. The shorthorn comes from the heavy soils and pastures of 
(ireat Britain; the Holstein comes from the soft grasses of Holland; 
the Jersey comes from the dry grasses and the scant grasses of the 
Channel Islands. So it is all along the line. Breeders have produced 
both animals that we keep pure. They have produced them for the 
surroundings of the localities in which they were een ; 
We do not do anything of the kind. Now, the high-selling horse in 
the British market, they say, is the Irish hunter. An Englishman 
wants to follow the hounds and he will pay almost any price; he will 
pay £500 for a first-class hunter that will take the hedges and ditches 
as he comes to them. Where do they get them? hen Professor 
Curtis, of the lowa Agricultural College, was going to Europe for 
some purpose, I said to him, “I want you to find out for me while you 
are there how they breed the hunting horse over, or where they get 
him if they don’t breed him; and where they get the big horse.” 
When he came back he informed me along these lines; a man goes 
to Chicago and he sees 10,000 horses pass through the market; he picks 
