132 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
time, sources of expense. The reason of 
this, in reference to the blood fillies, is that 
they are rarely resorted to breed to “ use¬ 
ful” horses from, and can not earn their liv¬ 
ing by ordinary work ; nor will they often 
command remunerative prices, unless got by 
“ fashionable ” horses as they are termed, 
standing at £30, £40, and £50, and unless 
they are in.the possession of the rich, who 
can afford to force them by feeding and hous¬ 
ing and encounter the great cares, uncer¬ 
tainties, and risks of rearing them properly, 
and can train them and en'erthein for great 
races, and run them successfully ; for per¬ 
formance on the turf is almost the only re¬ 
ceived and acknowledged test of the merit of 
a blond horse. 
With a continuation of the state of things 
in which the greater number of the useful 
and stylish horses having activity are repro¬ 
duced by thoroughbred stallions, out of 
mares of higher and higher breeding,losing 
their stamina every successive generation, 
it is easy to perceive that the steady and 
progressive approximation to the character¬ 
istics of the race-horse (a perfect animal for 
its special purpose), is depriving those horses 
of England, intended for useful purposes, of 
their strength and size. The geometrical 
progression, obtained by crossing an ameli¬ 
orating race on a common and wholly dis¬ 
tinct one, always using pure-bred males of 
the ameliorating race with the female prog¬ 
eny of each successive cross, is such that 
an animal of the tenth generation would 
have of the blood of the common race but a 
remnant of one out of a thousand and twen¬ 
ty-four parts ; and in the twentieth genera¬ 
tion there would be very much less than 
one-millionth parth of the common blood 
left. The fractional series is : ^ i T V 
sr T 5 ¥ 53 s xt u Tffito &c.* An eminent 
member of the veterinarian faculty, an Eng¬ 
lishman by birth, but now a resident of New- 
York, soon after his return from a late visit 
to his native country, observed to me tliat 
he thought there was a marked want of bone, 
however dense it might be, in the majority 
of the horses now seen in Hyde Park. This 
subject ofthe diminished powerof the classes 
of useful horses has arrested the attention 
of Spooner, the author of several distin¬ 
guished veterinarian works, and he boldly 
and stoutly recommends, as a remedy, re¬ 
course to ‘‘ half-bred” stallions. I saw no 
part-bred stallions in England ; some of the 
Cleveland Bays happily supplying the de¬ 
sideratum which Mr. Spooner would seek in 
half-bred stallions, with the additional advan¬ 
tage of fixity of type. These, Yorkshire is 
fortunate in possessing as a distinct breed, 
which is the reason, perhaps, why this coun¬ 
ty furnishes almost all the very strong horses 
in England with beauty and action. Hence 
it is that the British Government have to give 
to a Yorkshire man the contract for mount¬ 
ing the crack cavalry regiments; and the 
East India Company employ the same man, 
Jonathan Shaw, to supply their studs with 
Cleveland stallions, to strengthen and im¬ 
prove the indigenous races of Asia, and es¬ 
pecially to qualify them for cavalry service. 
Every now and then one sees a thorough¬ 
bred horse with a relatively high fore-hand, 
good crest, ample as well as deep chest, 
shortish legs, and a body well ribbed home and 
not too long, with general rotundity of form 
and good action ; but in that case he is not 
apt to be of great speed on the turf. Such 
a horse the English ladies prefer to ride. 
After a long protracted search among blood 
horses, who are by no means all beauties, 
Wyatt found m Recovery one he deemed a 
fit model forthe Wellington equestrian statue. 
The Duke’s favorite charger was a thorough¬ 
bred. A perfect Park Hack fora gentleman 
is usually of the same general style as a 
‘Zootechnie Gfinfirale—M. Villerov. 
lady’s riding horse of modern days, Palfreys 
being extinct, but of a rather larger size, 
which is commonly attained by a slight ad¬ 
mixture of races. A Hunter is a large Hack, 
with less symmetry than a Hack often, pro¬ 
vided he has the qualities sought., and from 
his size and therefore strength is fully up to the 
weight he has to carry on a long as well as 
a fast run. A Charger, in reference to natu¬ 
ral gifts, is in fact a hunter. I think car¬ 
riage horses, certainly Lord Foley’s dark 
bays, approaching light browns, (the most 
celebrated in England, for one of which I was 
told he had paid or refused £600) may well 
be defined to be large, or as Youatt says, 
“over-sized,” Hunters. Most of these va¬ 
rieties of horses in England are by blood 
stallions, out of part bred mares, as I have 
before observed, except a majority of the 
horses for the larger carriages ; and they 
are more generally new Clevelands on both 
sides, and, of course, have an infusion, more 
or less remote, of blood. This, with a view 
to uniformity of results in breeding, it is ex¬ 
pedient should not be so recent in the stal¬ 
lions as materially to affect the fixity of their 
type—keeping in mind the theory of Malingie 
Nouel and Hazard fils,* that generally the 
parent of the longer established race, or of 
the purer descent, exercises a predominant 
influence on the character of the offspring. 
Mr. Dickenson,! and Mr. Gray, the two 
great “ job-masters ”J of London, told me 
that they bought all their horses in York¬ 
shire, “ raw,” at two and three years old, at 
from £80 to £110, kept them on a farm un¬ 
til fit for use, and then brought them to Lon¬ 
don, and educated them in their brakes, for 
which they have accomplished drivers, with 
no other occupation. Mr. Gray spoke of 
William Burton’s horses, and said “they are 
my sort.” 
The forty-five Hunters of Lord Fitzhar- 
dinge, at Berkeley Castle, are exceedingly 
strong and heavy-limbed horses, from fifteen 
hands three inches to sixteen hands high ; 
and I understood from his huntsman that 
thoroughbred and very high bred horses could 
not live through a hard day’s run, in that 
heavy country. Nevertheless all foals from 
his strongest Hunter mares, no longer used 
in the field, are by thorougbred stallions. 
A lighter style of Hunter is preferred at 
Melton Mowbray—the metropolis ofthe fox¬ 
hunting world, as it is termed—in Leicester¬ 
shire. where the lands are mostly in old 
grass. Some of the Hunters there, for light 
weights, are doubtless thoroughbred. In 
Hunters a fair stride, to gallop, to fence, and 
to leap well, is required, and for that it is 
obviously necessarry to have tall and elon¬ 
gated, and not squat and punchy, horses. 
The strength and size of Hunters vary ac¬ 
cording to the nature of the country, and in 
proportion to the weight they are to carry ; 
and hence the common phrase, “ weight-car¬ 
riers.” The English believe that in well- 
formed animals, within reasonable limits, 
size stands to strengt,h«as cause and effect, 
and that if a heavy rider does not bear a just 
relation to the dimensions of his horse, he 
can never be well-mounted, and much less 
appear 
“ Incorps’d and demi-natur’d 
With the brave beast.” 
Nor do they ever deem a “ vehicular estab¬ 
lishment ” well “ got up ” if the “ cattle ” are 
disproportionally small. In this country, 
and in the New-England states more es¬ 
pecially, there is evidence of a growing ap¬ 
preciation of the importance of size in 
horses for all useful purposes. Even on the 
turf there is a maxim, as quoted by the ac- 
*Des Havas Domestiques. 
tMeotioned by CairJ as a celebrated grower of Italian 
rye grass. 
t ‘i Job-masters” let carriage horses to hire to persons 
who wish to avoid the risks and trouble incident to own¬ 
ership. The Queen’s mother “jobs ” her horses. 
complished President ofthe New-York Jock¬ 
ey Club, that “ a good big horse always beats 
a good little one.” 
I expressed to you orally the opinion that 
the modern Hack—the saddle horse of the 
nobility and gentry—is fully as high bred as 
the Hunter, and often higher bred, from a 
general comparison of the two classes, and 
the fact that the male parentage of both is for 
the most part thoroughbred. Nimrod, as well 
as Harry Hieover, frequently speaks of 
“ thoroughbred Hacks.” The Hacks of the 
Queen for the use of her attendants are 
strong horses, and are certainly not thor¬ 
oughbred. As throwing some light on this 
subject of the relative breeding of Hacks and 
Hunters, I shall be able to show you a fine 
portrait of a most celebrated hunting mare, 
and also an engraving of a Hack mare and 
foal from a picture by Herring—the equal in 
many respects of Landseer and M’lle Rosa 
Bonheur as a painter of animals—who had 
doubtless studied well all the points of a 
Hack. A very superior animal may some¬ 
times unite good qualities so well that if 
trained he would serve admirably either as 
a Hack, a Hunter, a Charger, or even as a 
harness horse, for the lighter description of 
vehicles ; but 1 do not mean to intimate that 
driving him much would not injure him for 
the saddle. To show you that a horse may 
be adapted to different uses, even in England 
where the division of brute labor, according 
to the qualities of animals, is pushed to such 
extremes, I send you one of Tattersall’s cata¬ 
logues of weekly sales, where you will find 
a horse is sometimes advertised as being 
Hunter, Hack, and harness horse all in one. 
While my Virginia blood does not allow 
me to feel with those who stigmatize thor¬ 
oughbred horses as “mere gambling ma¬ 
chines,” or “grasshoppers” (Sauterelles , as 
your French friend called them), I can not 
run into the other extreme, and believe that 
they are the best even for the plow and every 
other service. As it appears to me clear 
that they do not unite in themselves all the 
qualities desired in useful horses for quick 
movement even, the important point is to 
know the best, if not the only other, race to 
be resorted to, in order to give them more 
size and weight; or to counteract their ten¬ 
dency to weediness, delicateness, and want 
of suitable action, without taking away too 
much their speed, their wind, their “ bloody 
heads,”—as the common English people say, 
though all blood horses, have not blood-like 
heads—and their general gentlemanly ap¬ 
pearance. It is not the easiest matter to 
maintain the size of the race of blood horses 
in their pure progeny, even with constant 
attention and a careful continuance of the 
best nourishment when young, perhaps from 
their inclination to revert to the normal pro¬ 
portions of their Asiatic and African ances¬ 
try, which are about a hand lower. As ex¬ 
treme crosses can not answer, and pains 
must be taken not to run into coarseness 
while adding strength, in breeding horses 
for quick and useful service, I see but one 
race and that most probably a kindred one in 
all cases—the Cleveland—with which to 
effect the desired end. To produce horses 
fit for all useful, and at the same time pleas¬ 
urable purposes, requiring less power than 
that of a coach or carriage horse, and yet 
not the swiftness, on a burst, of a race 
horse, I think far more highly of the cross 
between Cleveland Bays, of the right sort 
(for that breed has its slugs as well as all 
others), and thoroughbreds, than of any other 
cross, apportioning the infusion of blood ac¬ 
cording to the nature of the service sought. 
The Cleveland bay seems to a certain extent 
to occupy the middle ground between the 
blood horse and the agricultural horses of 
England, having, with much of the strength 
ofthe latter, the long neck, the clean limbs, 
