402 
A t'rench tiaras and Tlwse Fair. 
liorses that remain are at best only unprofitable stock. As in 
the evening I stood by the roadside, thousands of horses ranked 
past me in file imtil the eye became wearied, a great many of 
them, I feared, to return home unsold. Down the hill they came 
as the sun set on that beautiful autumnal evening, an endless 
stream of mostly grey horses, big and little : huge Boulonnais — 
mastodons — and puny little Bidets, Bretons, Anglo-Bretons, 
Norfolk-Bretons — toiijonrs le tijjoe de Norfolk — Anglo-Percheron, 
Percheron, Anglo-Normands, Normands, and liorses no man 
alive could christen — a confused multitude, those of the better 
sort on the way to mend ; and a crowd of vulgar, " watery- 
blooded " horses of the common sort, ugly, soft and stupid, with 
dull eye and slow, dragging gait, the slaves and serfs of the 
glebe. II y aura totyours des miserahles — some of the men 
looked sad enough, evidently disappointed, for a light purse 
makes a heavy heart. 
The horse peculiar to the age reflects its civilisation — this 
suggestive observation of M. Gayot's might alone serve as the 
text for a substantive paper ; as it is, we have traversed our 
ground, we have visited the Haras, we have attended the fair, 
and a suitable summing-up, a fitting conclusion to my present 
undertaking, may be advantageously found, perhaps, in a short 
notice of M. Gayot's work on the French draught-horse. 
International agriculture in our day is far more than a mere 
phrase ; it is a charter object of our Society, and a short review 
of M. Gayot's work is, in my view, well fitted for a practical 
journal and record intended for practical men. Indeed, I would 
urge practical men to take a leaf out of M. Gayot's book, and to 
encourage as a class, at shows and otherwise, the light draught- 
horse — the active trotting cart-horse for which in England we 
have so much need.^ We cannot afford to ignore the horse 
industry of our friends d'oidre Manche, completely as that in- 
dustry is and has been for ages intermixed and identified with our 
from France is important, as bearing on the question of horse-breeding gene- 
rally : — 
In the ten years ending 1837 there were imported 19,200 and exported 3,830 
„ „ 1847 „ „ 23,256 „ „ 5,122 
1857 „ „ 1G,817 „ „ C,257 
1867 „ „ 21,206 „ „ 5,683 
„ 1877 „ „ 15,380 „ „ 23,020 
1887 „ „ 10,191 „ „ 34,522 
In the last total of exports there were a very large number of draught-horses, 
the breeding of which has very much increased, probably to meet a demand 
from the United States. 
' Many of my readers may remember " Sensation," a grey trotting cart- 
mare, an equine princess, welcomed always at Eoyal Shows with shouts of 
acclamation. 1 am not sure she was clear of blood ; but I have seen many, 
and I have possessed some, pure-bred little Clydesdale mares that were as 
nimble as Norfolks. 
