CHAPTER V.
HOW TO BREED A HORSE—NORMAN BLOOD.
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE PERCHERON NORMAN—A PURE RACE—CHARACTERISTICS AND POINTS—IMPORTATION INTO THIS COUNTRY.
In the preceding chapters on this subject, we have had occasion to speak of the Percheron Norman horse, some of which breed have been within a few years, comparatively speaking, introduced into this country; and, believing that the knowledge of this race at all, and still more of its existence in the United States, is confined to a small number of persons, and for the most part to a single locality, we have thought it would be not uninteresting to our agricultural readers to give a brief account of the animal, its derivation, its importation into this country, and of the benefits which are, we fully believe, to be derived from its employment. In the first place, then, Le Perche is a district of that portion of France which was formerly known as Normandy, in which the breed of the Norman horses has been most highly cultivated, and exists in its most perfect form and improved condition. Indeed, by some means somewhat anomalous, and at variance with the general experience and principles of breeding, this breed, which must in its origin have been a cross, has, in the process of many ages, become a family perfect in itself, capable of transmitting its qualities and reproducing itself, like to like, without any loss of energies or characteristics by breeding mares and stallions of the same race together. The remarkable purity of the race is attested by the cer-
