154 
COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 
At §75 per head, this number would amount to the sum of 
§324,500,000, or about half the annual value of all the grain 
crops of the whole country. 
But aside from this strictly utilitarian view of the subject, it 
is perfectly natural and proper, that we should become attached 
to those animals whose sagacity, courage, strength, fleetness, 
beauty, and perfect docility, have entitled them to our admira¬ 
tion, gratitude and even affection. 
My theme, then, is no mean one, and I shall enter upon its 
discussion with enthusiasm--treating, in rapid succession of 
the history of the horse; his range of habitat and suscepti¬ 
bility to modifying influences; of races; of the “points” of a 
good horse; of the different styles for different uses; of the con¬ 
ditions of improvability; and finally of the means requisite to a 
fulfillment of these conditions. 
HISTORY OF THE HORSE. 
The horse is undoubtedly coeval with man—notwithstand¬ 
ing the earliest historic accounts of the human race make 
no mention of him—for it is hardly reasonable that an animal 
so like man in his physiological endowments, and so essential to 
the comfort and convenience of man, would have been withheld 
until the late date in the history of the world, at which he is 
noticed in the sacred writings, to wit: about 650 years after 
the flood. 
The period of his first subjugation is also involved in obscur" 
ity, inasmuch as the first mention which is made of him is 
couched in language that implies discovered utility: “The 
Egyptians brought their cattle to Joseph, who gave them bread 
in exchange for their horses and their flocks,” &c. 
From the same source we also learn that horses wrnre both 
ridden and driven in chariots; for Jacob, in his dying words 
to his children, is reported to have said: “Dan shall be a ser¬ 
pent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’s 
heels, so that his rider shall fall;” and afterwards, when his 
