148' 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
wool, with a moderate allowance daily of 
ground peas and oats, and some potatoes as 
green food, for the greatest amount of wool; 
and those gross substances, oil-cake, corn 
meal, rutabagas, may be turned over to the 
producers of fat mutton. This w ill present¬ 
ly be adverted to again.— Morrell's Shepherd. 
THE HORSE- 
[Concluded from page 133.] 
Messrs. Henry Hall and Cheslyn Hall at 
their stud at Dudding Hill, Willesden, about 
five miles from London, where they 
keep about a hundred and fifty horses, and 
in the number half a dozen most distinguished 
thorough bred stallions,* are breeding sortie 
of their thorough bred mares and part bred 
Hunter mares to their Cleveland stallion, 
Cleveland Shortlegs,f to get “ weight carry¬ 
ing” Hunters fortheir own use. These gen¬ 
tlemen have but one Cleveland mare, valued 
at £200, who does the whole work of their 
establishment, in the way of drawing food, 
&c., with great dispatch. At one time they 
intended to breed Hunters from her by the 
thorough bred Lothario, but they finally con¬ 
cluded to rear Clevelands from her. Mr. E. 
Marjoribanks, the head of the house of 
Messrs. Coutts & Co., has a capital foal, by 
Cleveland Shortlegs, out of a favorite high 
bred Hack mare of his daughter’s, and Mr. 
Tanqueray, the celebrated short horn breeder 
showed me an excellent colt for slower work 
by the same horse out of a Suffolk mare of 
his. The practice of gentlemen of such 
knowledge and experience in breeding de¬ 
serves the highest consideration. The qual¬ 
ities and points they most covet in large 
horses for service out of a walk, are action 
with spirit, short back, strong loins, shortish 
and dark legs, black feet and good eyes and 
heads. Having given you distinguished au¬ 
thorities for the breeding of thoroughbred, 
II unter, Hack and Suffolk mares to a Cleve- ! 
land stallion, I must add that the horse 
whose portrait appears in Stephens “ as the 
very perfection of what a farm horse should 
be,” “was not a thorough.bred Clydesdale , 
but had a dash of coaching [Cleveland] blood 
in him, a species of farm horse very much 
in use on the borders, and admired for their 
action and spirit.” 
From a recent comparison between Eng¬ 
lish blood horse's on the one hand, and the 
finest specimens of Arabian horses presented 
to the Queen of England by oriential sover¬ 
eigns and African horses (Barbs) imported 
into France by military men on the other, it 
seemed to me that the former were immeas¬ 
urably superior to their ancestral races in 
every respect. In England, of late the Arab 
and Barb crosses on blood mares have failed 
signally for the turf, and on the part bred 
mares have not proved valuable for useful 
purposes. Amusing pictures are drawn of 
some solid Anglo Saxon and Celtic troopers 
in the East now of necessity mounted on 
Turkish horses, commonly accepted as a 
sub-variety of the Arab. lint for the com¬ 
bined activity, height and weight, without 
regard to condition, of the horses of the Scots 
Grays —ccs diables de chevaux gris, as they 
were called by the great Napoleon in his last 
battle field—ttiat Regiment would never have 
earned its well-merited fame either at Wa¬ 
terloo or at Balaclava. 
The American trotters, which are essen¬ 
tially a Northern creation, have obtained a 
just celebrity abroad. They can hardly yet 
■“Among the blood stallions at Dudding Hill are Harka- 
way, tlie largest horse of the kind in England, The Libel, 
Epirus and Lothario. The last two only have “knee ac 
tion.” 
iSee a portrait of this horse in the British Farmer’s 
Magazine for January, 1854. lie stands sixteen hands and 
one inch high, and “ possesses immense bone, good action 
and excellent temper.” I heard his present owners paid 
five or six hundred guineas for him. 
be called a type or pure race, and indeed 
they are for the most part of a very mixed 
lineage, and of an extraordinary diversity of 
sizes, shapes and 'colors ; but the further 
breeding together of animals of similar qual¬ 
ities and conformation will in the end pro¬ 
duce a definite breed. As a class they are 
certainly not saddle horses, according to 
either English or Virginia ideas; nor are 
they carriage horses, or horses of general 
utility, from defect of size. From the trans¬ 
actions of the Nevv-York State Agricultural 
Society, it appears that the Judges of that 
Society considered the Morgan family— 
which furnishes many fairand some quick 
trotters—as too small for “ horses of all 
work.”* They would in England be desig¬ 
nated as “ clever cobs.” You will be able 
to form a clear opinion of them, from having 
seen lately one or two correct examples at 
the Agricultural Fair in Richmond. The 
common ancestor, from whom this family is 
derived, the original Morgan horse, so called 
from the name of his owner, was foaled in 
1793. He was got by a blood stallion taken 
from M* * * * * *’s great uncle the loyal Col. 
DeLancy of this State, and out of a part 
bred mare. His four immediate descend¬ 
ants kept as stallions, in New-Hampshire 
and Vermont, were all out of mares of ob¬ 
scure or unknown origin, some of them, 
however, probably, having a dash of French 
blood as modified by the three-fold influ¬ 
ences of climate, food and crosses, in the 
adjacent province of Canada. The admirers 
of the Morgans in the North, sensible of their 
deficiency in stature for most purposes, do 
not estimate them by height, the usual 
method, but by weight like butcher’s meat. 
When in high order they tell comparatively 
in the scales, for they have surprising apti¬ 
tude in taking on fat even 'to the extent of 
obesity. Weight of a certain sort, but not 
that derived from the adipose tissue, is cer¬ 
tainly a very important element, for con¬ 
joined with muscular strength in due propor¬ 
tion it constitutes motive power, on which 
depends the sole value of the horse ; and 
that motive power is efficient as the height 
and length and general shape of the animal 
enable him to apply it with facility and ad¬ 
vantage to the work required of him. 
You will, doubtless, remember that anoth¬ 
er distinguished family, the Vermont Black 
Hawks, as they appeared in procession at 
the New-York Society’s show at Saratoga 
in 1853, were decidedly inferior to the blood 
horse in size. I think that the Vermont 
Black Hawk stallion Ticonderoga, shown at 
the fair at Richmond, was entirely too small 
for general utility; but he was symmetri¬ 
cal, and the natural attitude of his head and 
arched neck was admirable. His whole ap¬ 
pearance was distinguished, showing a con¬ 
siderable infusion of blood ;f and his trot, to 
my eye, was accurate, gentlemanly and 
graceful, though I do not know whether it 
was speedy. These families of horses un¬ 
questionably have their appropriate sphere, 
and that is singly, or, still belter, in pairs in a 
light trotting wagon (as peculiar an Ameri¬ 
can production as the trotters, for Carl Ben¬ 
son, Mr. Bristed, tolls us that France neither 
possesses the wood nor the skill with which 
to construct one light enough) a vehicle that 
in the North has almost completely usurped 
the place of the saddle, and I regret to say 
it. for there is something peculiarly health¬ 
ful, physically and even morally, in horse¬ 
back exercise, which, I am persuaded, has 
contributed in no little degree to the forma¬ 
nt is much the iashion of the dealers in the North to 
call a horse of any size a Morgan. At the Springfield 
‘ National exhibition’’fifty stallions passed under Ihat 
name.” 
tThe better opinion seems to be that the original Ver¬ 
mont Black Hawk horse was got by Sherman Morgan, (a 
son of the original Morgan) out of a “ three parts blood 1 ” 
mare reared in the Province of New-Brunsvwck. 
tion of many of those sterling points of char¬ 
acter, in which the English differ from their 
continental neighbors. For races in the 
North the blood horse has almost entirely 
given way to the trotter. 
The most distinguished specimens of the 
trotters that 1 have seen are horses with no 
pretensions to elegance of shape. The oth¬ 
er day a young Englishman, (whose noble 
father is the ownerof the winner in the same 
year of two blue ribbons of the English turf) 
while expressing to me his surprise and de¬ 
light with their performance in harness, ob¬ 
served that from their general appearance, 
and the dangerous looks of the position and 
nature of the shoulders of those he had seen, 
they would not fetch £10 in England. There 
is great diversity in the character of their 
gaits, some of the fastest having an ungainly 
and confused jumble of gallop before and 
trot behind, and others a “ square ” action ; 
but the fast people do not care for the sortof 
gait on the road, or on the turf, so long as it 
is not ruled off, provided it is the fastest. 
These “ fast crabs ” are hardy, and much 
“ fancy ” work may begot out of them if 
used with care; but we must not suppose 
that we can take them potbellied with grass, 
or slavering from a clover field, and make 
them go, especially on our roads, as they do 
in the North. To perform well, they must 
be in condition and treated on the same gen¬ 
eral principles as the racers, whose man¬ 
agement is admirably understood and whose 
successful cultivation has for a long time 
been pursued in Virginia with much talent 
and at great expense. I was gratified, at the 
late exhibition at Richmond, to perceive that 
we still retained splendid examples of the 
blood horse. 
The last time I met poor Captain Arnold, 
one of the first victims of the Russian war, 
he expressed himself in warm terms of ad¬ 
miration of your Cleveland horse, as embody¬ 
ing the points of Hack, Hunter, Charger and 
harness horse. Another high compliment 
he received was from a distinguished owner 
of blood stock in Virginia, who observed 
that lie did not discover from the conforma¬ 
tion of^ your horse any reason, except his 
size, why he should not run. P’or my part, 
I will merely say at present that I do not 
see in him, after a close examination, and 
comparison with English models while they 
are fresh in my memory, any particular 
point to object to—reserving, however, a full 
and minute opinion until next spring as I am 
not willing to risk a criticism of a fine horse 
in very rough condition, more especially be¬ 
fore the comparatively full development of 
his growth. Condition has immense influ¬ 
ence with every body. One of the best 
judges of horses appointed by the Royal Ag¬ 
ricultural Society of England candidly con¬ 
fessed to me—with much regret apparently 
at his “shocking mistake,” as he called it— 
that Melbourne, now from his progeny, 
doubtless the most successful and renowned 
stallion in England, the sire of West Austra¬ 
lian and many other winners, and at present 
distinguished for his powers and puints in the 
eyes of all, came before him as a candidate 
for the prize offered to the best stallion for 
hunters, but in very bad order, with sprung 
knees, &c.; and that he, with all his associ¬ 
ate judges, immediately discarded Melbourne 
as worthless and unfit to compete for any 
prize. Before his reputation was estab¬ 
lished, a celebrated judge of horse flesh had 
seen him in bad order and laughed at him as 
an “ omnibus horse.” The effect of condi¬ 
tion is not at all unnatural. As a horse can 
not exhibit speed until, after great and long 
labor, he has been put in condition for rac¬ 
ing, why should he show his symmetry, Its 
beauty and his merits when nothing has 
been done to bring them out 1 The late Lord 
Ducie waged war on the obese condition in 
