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NEW YORK. JUNE 12, 1886 
PRICE FIVE CENTS. 
$3.00 PER YEAR. 
Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1886, by the Rural New-Yorker In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
tractor, are at the head of the herd. Extrac¬ 
tor is sired by Favora, the winner of the 
medal at the Universal Exposition at Paris 
in 187$. No breed has done more for the im¬ 
provement of American draft horses than has 
been done by the importation of this famous 
breed'of French horses, whether known here 
as Normans, Pereherons, Norman-Percherons 
or Percheron-Normans. 
road for any length of time without wearing 
the hoofs down so much that the feet will be¬ 
come tender, aud if kept up the animal will 
become lame and useless. Colts often get 
foot-sore in this way, running in the fields and 
stamping flies, which wears away the hoof. It 
wears off faster than it grows out. It is not 
the shoes which injure the horses, but the way 
they are put on. A shoe should be fitted to 
t he foot of the horse, but quite often the rale 
is the other way, and the hoof is cut down and 
rasped off to fit the shoe. Shoes are too short 
or too narrow, and on this account the weight 
is not placed under the outside or shell of the 
foot, where it should be. I saw a whole stable 
of horses of great value at Cedar Rapids, Mich, 
which were all getting lame, because they 
were shod so very nicely by a man who was a 
“neat workman. ” This over-nice blacksmith 
had kept cutting away the heels and frogs so 
that each horse had become tender-footed, 
and oils had been applied to the hoofs to soften 
them. All the horses wanted were hoofs. 
Farmers make corns in their horses’ feet very 
often by allowing the shoes to remain on too 
long, or until the foot grows to the outside of 
them, bringing the weight of the body right, 
on 6he sole. This kind of economy and care¬ 
lessness should never be practiced. It often 
spoils good horses. F. D. c. 
wgonatt 
NORMAN MARES. 
__ , T Fig. 245 we show a group of 
Norman bred mares with 
3/ foals. These animals are 
owned by Messrs, Dillon Bros., 
. Normal, HI. Our artist has 
succeeded in making an ad- 
toirable picture. The mares 
arc just coming from the feed- 
f f ing barn, and slowly walking 
back to the pasture. The 
grouping is strikingly life¬ 
like aud effective. Messrs. 
Dillon Bros, have now a herd 
of 18ti horses at Normal. Besides the work of 
breeding pure-breds, they have engaged 
largely in range work in Texas, where they 
have some 4,000 horses, and breed 3,600 mares 
with a result that is said to be highly satis¬ 
factory. They have a large number of young 
pure bred horses of their own breeding. These 
are considered far more valuable for breeding 
purposes than the imported animals, as they 
are more easily kept and loss liable to disease 
than horses that have never been acclimated. 
The two fine stallions, Rio Grande and Ex¬ 
Gra xt that by early sowing, transplanting 
and careful hot-bed nursing, ripe tomatoes 
may be secured 10 days earlier than by sowing 
the seed early in the open ground, the stub¬ 
born fact remains, that if we count the time 
required for the plants to grow from the seed 
to the first ripe fruit, we shall find it decided¬ 
ly shorter in the plants grown in the open 
ground, account for it how we may. For the 
past two seasons I have grown so large a num¬ 
ber of crossed seedlings of the tomato that I 
could not afford them hot-bed room. Both 
seasons I have been surprised at the early ma¬ 
turity of their fruit, as well as by the fact 
that the young plants were not injured by late 
spring frosts. Whoever knew a tomato plant 
that came up from self-sown seed to be injured 
by frost in SpringI venture the guess that 
if we were to do away with hot-beds we should 
have before many generations tomatoes that 
would ripen their fruit as early as, and be far 
more hardy than, our hot-bed plants. 
* * * 
SHOELESS HORSES. 
I always wonder when I read the articles 
about shoeless burses whether the persons who 
write them really know’ anything about the 
matter. It is not true that a horse can go on 
ice without shoes without slipping. I had a 
mare which was never shod, and after she had 
bred 11 colts she was used some on the farm. 
One duy she was put in to draw wood, and an 
attempt was made to drive her across a strip 
of ice. She could not stand up, and after 
slipping terribly, fell down and could not get 
up. She would have died there if she had not 
been drawn to the shore by putting a rope 
around her breast to which the other horse 
w as hitched. This mare could not go on an 
icy road. Her hoofs had never been touched 
by a rasp or buttress, or anything else. They 
were as nature made them. Another thing— 
no horse can travel on a pike or a gravelly 
GROUP OF NORMAN MARES. Fig. 245 
