The Percheron horse

The Percheron breed is old enough, is propagated with sufficient uniformity, and presents sufficiently marked typical qualities to authorize us in claiming, in favor of its members, the characteristics and the title of a separate and distinct breed. Consequently, a Stud-book, recording its pedigrees, would not be out of place. This book would have the effect of concentrating the efforts of all the breeders, giving them a definite direction, and at the same time it would designate stallions foreign to the race, and which, up to the present time, have been presented with impunity as Percherons.

England exhibits a curious example of the influence of the Stud-book in the improvement of a breed. The equine and bovine races of that country, before the establishment of the Stud and Herd-books, were but rudimental.

The small number of colts of the Royal mares by Eastern stallions would have been lost had they not been classed together in families in a special book.

The discovery of the value of the bull Hubback would have been to no purpose had his descendants not been classified by themselves in an authentic manner.

For it is especially, and only, in the reproduction by family that a breed is formed. Consanguinity alone can form, in the beginning, a bond of cohesion and connection among the descendants of the primitive families. By it, alone, they acquire that great similarity of shape and adaptation to particular ends, that great ancestral power, which they transmit to their posterity, and which, even in a commercial point of view, gives them a superior value.

If it be permitted me for this purpose to select an example within our reach among the bovine races, I would say that, in Nivernais the celebrated Charollaise breed of cattle, only a few years ago, was diffuse, without uniformity, and without commercial value. The idea of classifying it by means of a Herd-book was no sooner put in practice than good crossings, being all made with system, no longer lost their significance. The breed has visibly improved, and, at present, it has acquired a value which gives it a rank immediately after the Cotentin.

The Stud-book might be established, as we have indicated above, by inscribing therein all the stallions and mares which had received prizes for years back, continuing this operation for a dozen years to come, and adding therein also the animals which had not taken prizes or had not been shown in the fairs, but which public attention had classed among the number of types valuable on account of the beauty and sureness of their reproduction.

Parallel to the mode of improvement which I have already shown, (Chapter 1st, Part Second), and which has as its agents the members of the Council-boards and the district members of each canton, there might be formed, as a means of embracing all, a great annual Department Fair, to be held alternately in the best towns of Perche at the time of the fairs which attract the most people; in Orne, at Mortagne and Alençon; at Chartres, Nogent-le-Rotrou, and Chateaudun, for Eure and Loir; at Vendôme and Montdoubleau for the department of Loir and Cher. The departments of the Cote-d’Or, Nievre, and Youne, which possess the best Percheron stallions, might likewise enter into the association of the Percheron Stud-book, for which they have all the elements.

This book would give increased value to the breed, as is easily understood, for it is the surest of all the means of improvement and perpetuation of valuable qualities. It would drive off, forever, the defective stallions, and those corrupted with hereditary blemishes, as well as those coming from tainted families, which, I feel sure, would be refused a record in its pages. The prices of colts would likewise gain by this measure, the effect being a powerful impulse given to breeding. But it would be necessary to be very careful about ever admitting any foreign blood, in order that the recorded herds might accumulate more and more an ancestral force.

The Stud-book would offer still another advantage, that of permitting us to find again the good types, should Perche some day, in consequence of bad crossings, or from want of judgment, deviate from the true way. In fact, desire of gaining too much and of enjoying too fast at present tempts every body into innovations. Our age, so eager to enjoy, and so quick in all enterprises, has no longer the patience to wait for the improvements that time and study can alone confirm and solidly establish. It wants things off-hand, and for this it is often satisfied with adulterated products; hence, these injudicious crossings; hence, this mania for mixing together without discernment—a mania which threatens to destroy our valuable national breeds.

In the midst of all this, the opposition of the army, of the government stud-stables, and of the trade in heavy horses, bring forth new complications. The army, neither occupied in breeding nor raising, and naturally remaining beyond the consequences it causes, encourages these crossings, obtaining thereby, more rapidly, the horses it needs. But how many of the horses bred by these means are not only unfit for army service, but also unfit for any service! Indeed, with a blood stallion and a common mare, if at the first crossing, among the thin-flanked, imperfect ones, there happen to be a passable horse, good, and with a certain degree of style, ordinarily all progress ends there. For, by the use of the latter as a reproducer, an animal ungainly and without value will most certainly be the result, except by chance. The races of the south affiliate with the Arab, and those of the north with the English; but the English, by the infusion of his blood, destroys the race of the south. This mode of crossing tends, then, to cause our old French races to disappear.

At the government studs, with elevated views, and with a disinterestedness to which all delight in rendering full justice and homage, they constantly encourage the crossings in which they see the realization of their views. They offer rewards, the most powerful of all incentives—giving but very modest prizes to the heavy horses, proscribing the light coats, and reserving their encouragement for the light horses of dark colors.

As for the trade, it adopts but slightly the views of the army and the government stables, and it gives its money to what has remained outside of these impulses.

With the Stud-book we will be able, without giving offence, to satisfy the army, the stud-stables, and the trade—the army and the stud-stables, which want the light, stylish, dark-skinned horse; the trade—omnibuses, consumption of the large cities, and agriculture—which require weight, vigor, action, honesty, docility, and endurance.

The Stud-book will furnish the means of finding types fit for all services. But the breeders will divide themselves into two opposite parties. Those who wish the dark-skinned, light horse, will breed him on the uplands and in the more barren districts. The others, in the rich, fertile, and abundant meadows, with a more nutritious food, will apply themselves to the opposite type.

Each will work in his own sphere; the profits, losses, successes, and failures, will soon be summed up, and will soon become, on both sides, the object of minute comparisons. If the light horse produce the most profit, his empire will soon extend over the domain of the heavy one.

But if, on the day of reaction, it be recognized that this crossing is incapable of ever making a good omnibus, a good shaft, or a good team horse; if the crossed breed be set aside for the primitive horse; and if it come about that the Percheron of pure race is better paid for, the fashion will soon return to him. There will the utility of the Stud-book be felt, for it will be by means of the families preserved authentically pure, in the cantons which had chosen them, that it will alone become possible to remold a race, compromised in a moment of hasty judgment, and render it plentiful upon the market.

It would suffice to bring together these types, and encourage the start in order to reëstablish Perche in all her glory. They might even, in the end, bring back to a good condition the lanky race that a better system, a more abundant nourishment, and more appropriate classification, would be called on to restore to its primitive form. Some generations would suffice to restore to it that homogeneousness that it formerly possessed, when the post-service required of it its vigorous and swift mail-coach horses.

In summing up, the Stud-book seems to me a useful agent in a triple point of view, namely: in the preservation, perfection, and restoration of the Percheron breed.

RECAPITULATION.

Preserve the Percheron race as pure as possible from all mixture not perfectly homogeneous; respect all its varieties due to the districts where they have been bred and raised; improve by crossing the best types of the country, and in such a manner as to correct defects, while preserving intact qualities and character.

If it be necessary to give more style to the action, and more richness to the blood, ask these qualities of the Arab, which has the privilege of imparting style and tone, while preserving weight, hardihood, vigor, and docility. The Arabian is kind, intelligent, reliable, laborious, and easily kept.

If, in obedience to urgent considerations, and in the absence of oriental horses, it becomes necessary to have recourse to English blood, choose quarter-bred stallions—at the most half-bred—but of an ancient race, and well-confirmed, with a well-opened and expressive eye, fine action, high spirit, and especially a total absence of irritability, and with all the appearances of honesty and aptitude for work.

For the innate defects of the English, generally impressible, susceptible, and unintelligent, cannot be too carefully guarded against. Delicate, a great eater, and requiring great care, he must, if honest, be well worked; if not, he pays ill his cost, and robs the hand which nourishes him. He should always be selected from a working family, and be himself a free worker. He who wishes to embark in horse-breeding will avoid more than one shoal by observing these simple considerations.

The delicate English horse, fond of his manger, bearing but little continuous and monotonous work, requiring of those that have charge of him tact, mildness, and an advanced equestrian education, is the horse of the rich man, and the man of pleasure, of the lover of the turf and chase, and of the wealthy farmer, who looks more to the beauty of his stock than to the quantity of its work.

The Arabian, sober, energetic, and laborious, is the horse for the small proprietor, the soldier, and the laborer. He is the wealth of the poorer and less improved countries.

The draft-horse is only suited to the farmer, and his size should be adapted not only to the district in which he is to be used, but also to the standard of cultivation of the country, and to the means of the person requiring his services. He may be improved, may be a trotter, and may be more stylish, but should always be adapted to the means of the breeder, and to the richness of the country. A large and fine animal would only vegetate in the hands of a person whose land is scarcely sufficient to support his family. He should only be owned by the wealthy farmer. And, on the other side, the latter should never raise his eyes to the blood horse, which should be left to those who have been a long time accustomed to the risks inseparable from his breeding and training.

A final word will make my thoughts better understood.

I desire to speak of the financial question, which is every thing in breeding and in agriculture. The best and the only manner of considering this is to compare the breeder at the start, at the beginning of his career, and when his career is ended, to verify the results. This operation is nothing short of a settlement of accounts.

In my travels I became acquainted with two neighboring districts. One was rich, fertile, and productive, eminently suited to breeding superior fancy horses. But they were poorly raised therein; the farmers disdained rearing horses suited to the soil, and the horses they did breed, already bad from the very start, were raised in idleness, and poorly fed, on account of their earning nothing. The other district was poor, and the soil produced only what could be wrested from it by force. However, by dint of labor, agriculture flourished. The horse, chosen with care, suited the country, worked well, and all prospered.

The fancy struck me, to compare the settlements of estates in these two districts, and here are the results of this examination:

In the first district, the breeders all commenced and entered upon their career with capital. Notwithstanding this, 18 out of 20 died over head and ears in debt.

In the second, they were almost all former servants or farm hands, possessing only their savings, with which to establish themselves. In spite of these difficult beginnings, 17 out of 20 left fortunes to their children, who, the reverse of the children of the former, were early accustomed to labor and to a regular life. It is useless to say that in these examples I always excepted the cases where trade, to carry on its business, sheltered itself under the cloak of the breeder; for this does not constitute breeding any more than the trade in bread-stuffs carried on in a farm-house constitutes agriculture.

Finally I would call the attention of the Percheron farmer to two suggestions. Suppose the supply of horses from the departments of Orne, Eure and Loir, Loir and Cher, Eure and Sarthe, and from the district of Mortagne, now amounting to about sixty thousand head, should outrun the demand of the omnibuses and wagons; the remedy for this would be to aim at greater style and beauty, at the same time preserving the qualities required by the omnibuses and express companies. We would thus create another outlet for our stock, through the demands of the dealers in fancy horses, and the consumption of the army, and bring the Percheron race very near to perfection.

No disappointment need be feared in crossing the Percheron with a foreign stallion, either a heavy Arabian, a strong, well-bred Merlerault, or a dark colored Norfolk, on the express condition that this stallion should be selected with care, and be of the best stock of his breed. The Arabian can be placed everywhere, both on poor land and in the hilly districts; where the progeny of the other stallions would not thrive, his will succeed well. The get of the Merlerault, and of the English horses especially, require the most fertile and the best cultivated districts.

If the results of these crossings, male or female, be successful, they may be well employed in breeding, and, after some generations, in the districts where breeding is carried on with care, they may become the starting point of a choice stock. Commencing with the qualities of good and substantial post-horses, the Percheron could be elevated to the dignity of the carriage-horse, and in other less fertile localities to staunch and compact hunters.

Those showing no improvement, (too many of which are met with) would find a market open to them in the trade, among the moderately rich, and in the army, especially in the artillery. The males, when castrated at an early age, would be more acceptable to the trade, and, while ceasing to dishonor the privileged class and the class destined for reproduction, could be used for numerous purposes. For the gray horse the outlets are necessarily more limited. When the omnibuses and teamsters have taken their complement of 6,000 or 7,000 horses, and when the foreigner has gathered up his 600 or 700 choice specimens, there no longer remains a sufficient demand for the second-rate stock.

As there now exist neither diligences, couriers, mail nor post-coaches, for which the gray Percheron was formerly required for the night road service, there is no longer any imperious reason for preserving his old coat; henceforth he may be bay or dark colored. And, provided he becomes so by the aid of a dark-coated Arabian, or a heavy, well-bred Merlerault, or by a fine specimen of a Norfolk, the type of his race, I see therein no inconvenience.

When steam machines, to supply the hands which are wanting, will plow our fields and perform the hardest work, we will have no longer to regret that our Percheron laborers have not the gray color which possessed the property of turning the scorching rays of the sun. One of our greatest writers, one of our lights in equestrian science, has, however, written:

“The use of stallions of mixed blood, borrowed from foreign races, left but regrets in Perche. It has produced vices of disposition and blemishes which did not belong to the Percheron horse, and has given him in exchange no good quality. It has disturbed the structure of the progeny without any gain in form or endurance.”

Notwithstanding all my respect for this high authority, let me be allowed to ask him if he has ever seen the progeny, too rare it is true, of some well-chosen stallions in close affinity to Percheron blood, called Gallipoli, Sandy, and Bayard? Never did finer results gratify the pride of a breeder, never did trotters drag heavy diligences with more power and ease, and never did sons transmit more faithfully to their descendants the image and characters of their ancestors. Doubtless he was only shown the numerous and heterogeneous progeny of even the best full-blooded stallions Sylvio, Eylau, Reveller, and others by Percheron mares—crossings so surprising in their absence of affinity that I am still astonished that the thought of them ever entered a reasonable mind.

When in the absence of stallions of our own, such as we wish, I advise the use of foreign ones, I do not give this counsel blindly, but, select the types appearing to me the best adapted to the purpose, and instead of proceeding with giant strides I would pursue the work with a patient and prudent slowness.