MERIC AN AGRICULTURIST. 
341 
The Shanghai breed is admir ably fitted for 
being made capons of, which is, the object the 
Chinese have in view in raisi ng this descrip¬ 
tion of fowl. His mammoth height and 
lank proportions are just what are required 
for making a capon, weighing, when 15 or 
16 months old, twelve pounds or over. If 
the Shanghai be not capouized, and kept the 
length of time as he ought to be—for a 
shorter period will not bring him to perfec¬ 
tion—but is killed as a chicken, in the same 
way our native breeds are, he is not worth 
as much as the latter. This is the experi¬ 
ence of every one who has long kept the 
Shanghai breed. How can his long, bony 
carcass compare with that of our native 
breeds, with tneir compact, handsome shapes 
—the Bucks County breed, for instance, or 
any even of our common dunghill fowls—as 
all these are ready for killing at an age when 
the Shanghai is a mere ill-formed, gawky, 
big chicken ! But caponize him, and keep 
him the requisite time, as is the case in his 
native land, and you see perfection !—his 
mammoth form and lengthy proportions are 
filled in with flesh and fat—a wonder and a 
pleasure to look at. No improvement want¬ 
ed—just what the Chinese farmers intended. 
As the art of caponizing is confined to al¬ 
most, one locality in this country, the pecu¬ 
liar form of the Shanghai cannot be properly 
estimated ; consequently he will be changed 
and improved in form until he can not be 
distinguished from our native breeds ; then 
the name of Shanghai will be forgotten, and 
our poultry amateurs will be busy improving 
the form of some other variety from Asia, 
with mammoth height and lank proportions, 
and with exactly the same results. 
I have made capons for twenty years. 
J. G. 
AMERICAN HORSES. 
We make the following extract on Ameri¬ 
can horses from an address in September 
last, by Mr. J. Prescott Hall, of New-York, 
before the Aquidneck Agricultural Society, 
at Middletown, II. I. It abounds with inter¬ 
esting facts, showing why American horses 
are so superior, and which is mainly attribu¬ 
ted to the abundant infusion of Arab blood in 
their veins. 
And now, Gentlemen, let us say some¬ 
thing of the horse—the most beautiful, the 
most spirited, the most soul-stirring, and 
perhaps the most useful of all the tribes that 
came out of the ark. 
Observe him trained for the race, exercis¬ 
ing for war, or harnessed to the chariot; 
his eye on fire, his nostrils expanded, his 
coat glistening like burnished gold, and tell 
me if he is not a subject for the painter and 
a model for the statuaryj? 
The Arabs write—“ True riches are a 
noble and fierce breed of horses, and of 
which God said, the war horses—those which 
rush on the enemy with full-blowing nostrils; 
those which plunge into the battle early in 
the morning.” 
W’e had in New-York, some years ago, a 
most estimable gentleman, who rose from 
humble circumstances in mechanic life, to 
fortune and to honor; being successively 
Mayor of the City and one of its representa¬ 
tives in Congress. In mis latter place he 
became very fond of investigations into tax¬ 
ation, importation, exportation and all the 
sources of national prosperity and wealth. 
These subjects he would argue anywhere ; 
in doors and out of doors ; in sunshine or in 
rain : and if he caught a willing ear he would 
exclaim in exultation—“ if there is anything 
in the world I do understand, it is tanning 
and political economy !” 
My own conceit, as to my own acquire¬ 
ment, leads me in the same direction with 
my former friend; and I too, can exclaim, if 
there are any things in the world I do under¬ 
stand, they are—horseflesh and the law ! 
If I do not understand something of this 
subject my opportunities have been thrown 
away ; and all in vain have I been Presi¬ 
dent of a Jockey Club. 
In my earliest days I was introduced to 
the horse in his noblest forms ; for the Arab 
fondness which my father cherished for 
thorougbreds, he imparted to his son, who 
has retained that attachment all his days. 
He had at one time, when I was yet a boy, 
five excellent and beautiful specimens of the 
race horse, the Cleveland Bay, and the ani¬ 
mal of all work, now know as the Morgan; 
all of which were kept for the improvement 
of their respective classes ; and the names 
of Escape, Pacolet, King William and 
Kochlani, are familiar sounds in my ears. 
It was my father who first told me the 
story of Lindsey’s Arabian, a horse well 
known to him, and in my native country, by 
the nalne of Ranger; and I have galloped a 
grand-daughter of this steed many a mile, 
weary enough for her, but cheering and 
pleasant to me. 
This beautiful Barb was presented by the 
Emperor of Morocco to the Captain of an 
English frigate, who landed him on one of 
the West India Islands, for exercise and 
refreshment. 
Being playful as a kitten he w'as turned 
loose into a lumber yard, and taking it into 
his head to ascend a pile of timber, he fell 
and broke three of his legs. 
The master of a vessel out of New-Lon- 
don, well known to the Captain of the man- 
of-war, upon solicitation, received the horse 
as a present in his crippled and hopeless con¬ 
dition. With much skill and patience the 
master of the “ Horse Jockey ” caused the 
fractured limb to be set, and succeeded at 
last in bringing the animal home to Con¬ 
necticut, where he became the ancestor of 
many brave sons and beautiful daughters. 
Some of these being employed during the 
Revolutionary War In the South as cavalry 
horses, attracted so much attention that 
their history and pedigree were inquired into 
with care ; and the result was that General 
Washington sent Captain Lindsey of the 
army to Hampton, in Connecticut, to pur¬ 
chase the foreigner ; and thus it was that the 
Old Ranger—beautiful as Apollo, white and 
shining as silver, went down to Virginia to 
lay his mended bones there. But before de¬ 
scending to the grave he left specimens of 
his blood in the form of Tulip and other 
capital racers ; and now it flows to this day 
in the veins of many a high mettled steed, in 
that aneient and renowned dominion. 
John Blunt, an Arab in every particular, 
although a thoroughbred American horse, 
and as good a racer of his size as the world 
saw, not fifteen hands high, could not con¬ 
tend successfully with Fashion, because her 
superior height and length gave her a stride 
which so told upon the little horse, in a race 
of four miles, that he was compelled to yield 
the palm to that renowned, and in my opin¬ 
ion, matchless and unrivaled courser. 
To come down to practical results then, 
you may ask, would you have farmers breed 
and use race-horses V Certainly not thor¬ 
oughbreds ; by which I mean animals whose 
pedigree can be traced directly to Arab orig¬ 
inals ; but I would have them never employ 
any, that were not strongly imbued with the 
best properties of oriental seeds. 
The heavy horses of Europe, including 
those of England, France and Holland, are 
wholly unsuited to our habits and purposes, 
being slow of motion and expensive to keep. 
For farming draft, oxen must always be 
preferred in New-England to horses or 
mules ; for when their career in the cart and 
plow is run, they have not lost any part of 
their value, but become food for man, as they 
were destined finally to be. 
Again, the harness of the oxen employed 
by us, is of the cheapest and most simple 
description ; and 1 defy any man to contrive 
a cooler or better mode of coupling this ani¬ 
mal to his plow or cart, than by the com¬ 
mon wooden yoke which we use and which 
is equally well calculated for forward trac¬ 
tion, or for backing the load. 
The horses which you ride and drive daily 
are, all of them, strongly imbued with the 
blood of the thoroughbred, and we rarely 
see in this state a single specimen of the 
heavy draft-horse of Europe. 
When Mr. Birkbeck, the distinguished 
English Farmer, first came to this country, 
more than 30 years ago, he wrote and pub¬ 
lished an account of what he saw; and 
among other things he remarked, and with 
some astonishment, that the American horses 
were all blood horses, or so crossed with 
that race as to cause its predominance to be 
seen wherever he traveled; and he pro¬ 
nounced them superior to those of Europe. 
Even in Pennsylvania, their strong wagon 
horses have lost their heaviness ; and while 
they are of the largest size, they have also 
blood, compact bone and' good action. An 
English cart horse carries as much hair upon 
his fetlocks as he does upon his mane ; while 
the legs of the Canestoga may be found as 
clean as those of the Barb. 
We have bred in this country from the 
best originals ; and our trotters, including 
the Morgans and Black Hawks, owe their 
speed and endurance entirely to their eastern 
blood. Old Messenger, one of the best ra¬ 
cers that England ever lost, was introduced 
into this country shortly after the Revolu¬ 
tion. He was the sire of Mambrino, a thor¬ 
oughbred trotter, who could knock ofl' a 
mile in three minutes in his twenty-first year 
when I saw him ; and he transmitted his 
blood to the famous Lady Suffolk who could 
go the same distance in two minutes and 
twenty-six seconds! 
He and she had the hardy color of Old 
Messenger who gave to them the speed and 
endurance of the trotter; while the same 
Patriarch imparted to Eclipse his swiftness 
as a racer. j 
Trustee, who not long ago astonished all 
England by going over a course of twenty 
miles within the hour in harness, was a son 
of imported Trustee—a thoroughred race¬ 
horse, whose price at one time was three 
thousand guineas. 
Mr. B., of London, when in this country 
had so strong a desire to see the animal that 
performed this feat, that I took him to his 
stable in Houston-street, where we saw him 
harnessed to the baker’s cart which he daily 
drew through the streets of New-York. 
He was a chesnut, fifteen hands two inches 
high, and exactly the kind of horse which we 
should breed and raise. 
During the Canadian rebellion, the English 
sent over to those provinces a considerable 
body of cavalry. Many of these horses died 
on the voyage from stress of weather, and 
they were compelled to mount their men by 
purchases in New-York, Vermont, and New- 
Hampshire, all along the borders of Canada. 
These animals I saw in Montreal in exer¬ 
cise. They were specimens of the middling 
sized Morgan, with striking marks of blood ; 
and Col. Shirley, of the 7th Hussars, in¬ 
formed me in 1842, that they were the best 
cavalry horses for all work that he had ever 
seen; so good he said, that they were not to 
be sold when the regiment went home, but 
to be taken to England for use, as one would 
take coals to Newcastle. 
Believe me, gentlemen, we of Rhode-Island 
should breed our own horses, and breed 
them larger and better than we do now. It 
