IMPROVEMENT OF HORSES. 
163 
bodied, low, short-legged, hardy, but slow, and rather wanting 
in that spirit which marks many other races, was derived from 
France and Spain ; 
The Conestoga , of Pennsylvania, a large, long-legged, rather 
ungainly looking animal, often IT hands high, derived from 
Germany; 
The English horse, from which our best blooded horses have 
sprung ; and 
The Mustang , of Mexico aqd South America, a rough un¬ 
couth, but hardy race, derived in the fifteenth century from 
Spain. 
Of the special strains of horses in the United States much 
might be said, as indeed books have been written. I am glad to 
see parties waxing warm in behalf of their favorites, knowing that 
the result of this lively emulation will be an awakening of the 
public mind, not only to the respective merits of each, but also 
to the importance of an effort at improvement in the breeding 
and rearing of horses generally. 
But inasmuch as it ^s necessary, in order to success that we 
have some model before the mind, I shall proceed to sketch one 
—not doubting that individuals here may differ with me as to 
what should be considered 
POINTS OF THE REPRESENTATIVE HORSE. 
I am aware that this is delicate ground and that in one sense 
the idea is absurd, since the multiplicity of uses requires a 
multiplicity of forms and characters ; still as there are some 
men who ^eem to have combined in a very remarkable manner, 
the greatnesses of the great, and to approach what we conceive 
« 
to be a universal genius, so there are some horses which appear 
to be so faultless in their totality and so adapted to almost every 
kind of service as to entitle them to the rank of models. 
My own notion is, that in the whole range of domestic ani¬ 
mals, there is none which combines so many of the qualities 
essential to beauty and nobility as the horse—none whose nature 
so allies him to the human race. Behold him as he prances 
