612 
VERTEBKATA. 
A MOEGAN HOESE. 
one among us, inasmucTi as the stock is alike remarkable for the persistency with which its good 
qualities are transmitted, and the strength, vigor, and durability of its species, in application to 
the stern and stubborn work required of them in the common business of the country. 
It must not be supposed from the preceding remarks that the improvement of the horse in 
those forms specially adapted to the uses of the country, nor indeed in its highest forms as judged 
by the English standard, is a matter of indifference to our people on the contrary, there is an 
active, intelligent, and pervading spirit of competition and euuilation among our gentlemen of 
ample means and liberal tastes, as well as those governed by merely iitilitarian views, which is 
efficiently exercised in promoting the improvement of our breeds of horses. No better evidence 
of this need be offered than the fact that at a "General Horse Convention," held at Springfield, 
Massachusetts, in September, 1858, more than fifteen thousand people were assembled, including 
gentlemen of the highest distinction, and fi'om every part of the United States, some of them 
having traveled more than two thousand miles to be present on the occasion.* 
of a climate, at the same time counteracting the tendency to the degradation of species which everywhere besets ani- 
mal life. 
This valuable and interesting animal died at the age of twenty-nine, having been long used as a stock -horse. It 
has been well said of him, that probably "no horse of this or any other country has so strikingly impressed upon 
his descendants, to the fifth and sixth generations, his own striking and valuable characteristics, and it may be safely 
asserted that the stock of no horse ever bred in this country has proved so generally and largely profitable to the 
breeders of it. The raising of it has made the fortunes of hundreds of individuals, and added hundreds of thousands, 
if not millions of dollars, to the wealth of Vermont and New Hampshire." 
The fame of this breed is not confined to the United States ; the present Emperor Napoleon has recently caused 
four of them to be taken to France for his own use. 
* The Springfield " Horse Show" commenced October 10, 1853, and has since been continued annually ; a field of 
sixty acres, called Hampden Park, has been purchased for the exhibition, and was inaugurated in 1857, the Reverend 
Emry Ward Beeoher making tlie address on tlie occasion. This year (1858) we are told that " on Wednesday, Septem- 
ber 15th, trials of speed between some of the most celebrated horses in the country took place, and attracted even 
still larger throngs than on the previous day. No less than twelve thousand visitors entered the grounds, and the 
