English blood, infused with judgment, allies well with the Percheron race, and we have met with perfectly successful results in the midst of the disappointments which have been the consequences of injudicious crossing. Too often these crossings have been effected in violation of common sense, without any attention to the distance which separates the blood horse from the common, low-bred Percheron mare, she having no affinity with him. But these trials require science, wealth, and perseverance, and are far from being within the reach of ordinary breeders. Those who would succeed must possess the talent of waiting, for unfortunately the rearing of the resulting progeny is a burden. Their slow development renders them but little fit for the labors to which the farmer is in the habit of consigning his colts. Then, they cannot, like the young Percheron, pass from hand to hand, and thus they find themselves stripped of the only advantage which renders the raising of the draft colts so profitable: avoiding embarrassment and affording a prompt profit to all through whose hands they pass. In fact, it can easily be conceived how favorably, at present, are these chances of profit distributed among several hands. The capital invested is soon returned; and thus this operation is within the reach of all purses.
PRINCE IMPERIAL.—FRENCH NORMAN.
The issue of English blood, if judiciously managed, will some day be finer than the unimproved Percheron. But, although carefully looked after and abundantly fed, he will remain puny during his early growth, and therefore his account can only be closed at a distant date. By whom, then, is he to be raised? By the farmer rich in ready money? In every country such men are rare. By the large landed proprietor? But he is not a breeder, or if he be, it is only of race-horses.
Some half-blood English stallions noted for strength and weight, standing at Mesle-sur-Sarthe, Courtomer, and Nogent-le-Rotrou, have produced fine coach and draft-horses, but their number has always been rather limited, and they have nearly all been raised without care, like the half-blood colt simply at pasture; consequently, the profit accruing has been nothing, or nearly nothing, and these have been able to add nothing useful in the way of example and imitation.
On the contrary, in Lower Perche, commencing at Nogent and extending as far as Vendôme, the draft-horse, properly speaking, is the only one that has been raised. The wagon-horse is there only met with as an exception, and the cultivator is far from being the worse off on this account. Witness the prosperity of Montdoubleau, which has become the first market of Europe; witness the splendid and spirited trotting mares it produces every year, and of which the Julies of M. Derré and the Sarahs of M. Lamoureux are glorious specimens.
Perche has seen but twice, to our knowledge, good and irrefutable results obtained from the English crossing with her race—the first, with Sandy; the second, with Bayard. Sandy was a draft stallion, with a long and silky mane, a perfectly white coat, and with a high and graceful gait like that of an oriental horse; lean and strong legs, a short head, dilated nostrils, and a large and intelligent eye. Although foaled in England, this horse was evidently not English; he must have come of eastern blood, as this is so often seen among our neighbors who successfully use the Arab blood in the formation of their draft and hunting races.
As for Bayard, he was a son of a Percheron mare belonging to M. Viel, of Chiffreville, near Argenton, one of the finest and purest ever seen. This mare had been bred to Idalis, a small and well-knit wagon-horse, son of Don Quichotte, who descended from the thoroughbred brood-mare Moina. Consequently, Bayard had in his veins some of the best oriental blood, and it is to this circumstance that is attributed the vigor, gait, and beauty, of all his progeny.
Perhaps the two stallions Benvenuto and Fandango, which passed for Anglo-Percherons, and which have been cited as types of draft-horse stallions, will be held up to me as a refutation. Benvenuto, the stallion from Pin, which has produced well in Perche, was not the son of Eastham and a Percheron mare, as was said at the time in order to have him accepted by the government, but was really out of a Percheron mare by a Percheron stallion coming from the neighborhood of Bellesme, and the descendant of Arabian stallions which had been standing in that district.
Fandango, the other crossed Percheron, uniformly a successful stallion, had double cross, on the sire’s side, of the blood of the Arabian Dagout, and his dam, whose pedigree has also been explained to me, came likewise from near Bellesme.