THE ENGLISH CROSS.
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.
[Illustration: 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_.
A Percheron stallion called _Jean-le-Blanc_, native of Mauves, and
sold about the year 1825 to a M. Viard of Villers, in Ouche, near
Sap, (department of the Orne,) has been the sole improving agent of
the equine race in Ouche, which, up to that time, was reduced to
miserable small horses without any stamp or value. Although heavy,
powerful, and, indeed, a shaft-horse, his gait and an indescribable
something pervading his whole body, recalled so thoroughly the idea of
the oriental family that one was disposed to take him for an enlarged
Arabian. This fact, often related to us, excited our curiosity. We did
not rest until pressing inquiry upon inquiry, one after another, we
ascertained that his family had been crossed with a stallion from the
Pin stables, standing at the Chateau of Côèsmes, near Bellesme. And,
what was this stallion? The Arab _Gallipoli_!
What can be inferred from these facts, if it be not that the crossings
which have best succeeded in Perche have been those of the Arab, and
that the English crosses have only succeeded when tempered by contact
with the Arab?
But if the absolute want of stallions for improving the breed be felt
among the pure Percherons; if it be impossible to procure either good
Arabs or heavy English, freshly tempered with Arab blood; if important
and powerful considerations compel a recourse to the English cross, the
latter should only be accepted intelligently and under good and wise
conditions. Therefore we ask leave to refer the reader particularly to
what we have already advanced in the preceding chapter upon the choice
of an English stallion.
In Brittany, in the department of Finisterre, we have often heard it
declared by quite a large number of breeders, that for having wished
to proceed too fast in that way, they had, from the commencement,
experienced numberless disappointments, the second generation from the
English cross being always inferior to the first. From stout sires
and dams, who, from their general appearance might be classed in the
category of heavy-draft, there daily came ungainly stock, thin,
lanky, leggy, and without weight in the hind-quarter, unattractive,
of a difficult sale when young, and proving a veritable misfortune to
the small farmer counting upon the sale of the colt to pay his rent
and having neither the place nor means to raise him. This stock was,
moreover, the object of another disappointment quite as serious as the
first; rarely was a good worker to be found among this burdensome race.
Is not this tall, lank, weak,—in a word this abortive progeny,—issue of
strong and hardy parents, a strange and discouraging result? “Oh! why
is this?” exclaimed the Brittany cultivators. There was a simple reason
for it, of which they had not learned the value. They proceeded with
race-horse speed in the way of crossing, and gave no oats. They were
ignorant of the requirements of the _distingué_ horse; they did not
know that in the sire and dam, or at least in one of them, there was
circulating more or less English blood, which produces strange results
in proportion as it leaves its native place and reaches a poor country
or one of hard work, and in which it no longer receives the prodigal
care of its native land.
We have said that the Arab preserves indefinitely his warm blood and
constantly gives what he has not even himself,—although this truth
resembles a paradox,—that is: a powerful appearance and a strong
frame. It is not the same with the English horse and his derivatives;
they become thin and always degenerate. If their progeny be not fed
with oats without stint,—they require this, and are heavy eaters,
like everything which comes from the north,—their blood grows poorer
rapidly. In successive generations of these families, born in a dull
and damp atmosphere scarcely ever visited by the sun, the legs become
lean and lanky. It is necessary to recur incessantly to new drafts of
English upon English, always expensive and requiring additional care,
without taking into account that the result of too great an infusion
of this peevish and often irascible blood would be to destroy the
heavy-draft race—a race that I would like to see preserved intact
alongside of the two others, though he be not quite suited to a country
as hilly as Perche. He might, doubtless, plow successfully the vast and
smooth plains of Beauce; but this is not the lot of all. I look for
him in that busy country called Perche, where he must, without rest or
pity, with a shoulder free from all tenderness, drag heavy vehicles
to the tops of hills, and it will please me to see the play of his
haunches and limbs in descending with these loads bravely and without
flinching to the bottom of the valleys.
Do you expect, also, from a horse derived from English blood that
cool, restrained, and ever fresh energy, that courageous patience of
which the Percheron, every day, gives an example in the omnibuses of
the streets of Paris? Dragging at a trot heavy loads, the weight of
which frightens the imagination; stopping short, both in ascending
or descending; starting off freely and always without balking; never
sulking at his work or food, and fearing neither heat nor cold: this is
a specimen of Percheron qualities.
Do you expect from an unjudicious cross with English blood a good,
heavy draft-horse, a good shaft-horse, or a true wagon-horse? No one
has now any illusion on this score.
In London, a traction of only about 2,000 lbs. is required of a
draft-horse. In Paris, the horses harnessed to the heavy stone carts
are required to drag as much as 5,000 lbs. each, and often even more.
What will dealers in heavy draft-horses do? The trade is already taxed
to supply the demand. For long experience has taught, and unjudicious
crosses have proved the English horse and his derivatives to be unfit
for this purpose, for they are too nervous and not sufficiently
staunch. Thus, the trade avoids them by instinct, and by instinct
avoids every thing resembling them. And, on the other hand, it seizes
hold of and clings eagerly to every indication that can serve it as a
sign or mark—every thing that can guide it in the search for what it
likes, and every thing that can guard against its opposite.
Hence, it repels and proscribes the dark-colored coats without
examination and reflection, because they are considered the colors of
the English horse; it accepts the grays with confidence, because with
them it perceives the absence of the dreaded blood, and in them it has
found that which satisfies all its wants. Would we have arrived at this
point if we had been prudent, and had the cross-breeding been better
understood?
Finally, what is there at the end of this negative pole and this
positive pole? There is the Percheron on whom has devolved, and will
devolve for a long time yet, the rude and killing mission of executing
the feats of strength exacted of him by modern civilization. The
profits in supplying the demand, accrue, and will accrue for a long
time to the producer.
Thus so long as machinery does not replace the horse in the traction
of heavy carriages, so long as the necessity for hard labor remains,
requiring strength, intelligence, endurance, and willingness, so long
to the Percheron alone will be reserved the dangerous honor of being
the great draft power, and the price of this matchless agent will
increase in proportion to the growing impossibility of finding his
substitute.
It is now the time, while crossing the active and trotting breeds with
the Arab or with the well-chosen English horse, to carefully preserve
the heavy draft-horse, and, by means of persevering and judicious
crossing, retain for him his marked superiority.
These crossings, which I will sum up in concluding, may find a powerful
aid in the creation of a Stud-book of the Percheron breed.