There are numbers of rich men throughout the country breeding fancy horses, for sport and speculation, but they only add to the increasing burden of useless animals, except for gambling purposes; for they are neither work horses, coach horses, nor saddle horses. Our farmers of the land are the breeders, as our recent war of the rebellion testified. The war of 1812, the Mexican war of 1847, and the war of 1861 each called for horses at a moment's notice, and our farmers supplied them, destroying foundation bloods for recuperation. From 1861 to 1863 the noble patriotism of our farmers caused them to vie with each other as to who should give the best and least money to help the government; and cannot our government now do something for the strength and sinew of the land, the farmers? I was dealing in horses, more or less, from 1861 to 1863 (as I had been before and long after), and many was the magnificent horse I saw led out by the farmer for the government, at a minimum price, when, previous to 1861, $400, $500, and even $600 was refused for the same animals. Horses that would prove a headlight to any gentleman's coach in the city, and others that would trot off fourteen to sixteen miles an hour on the road as easy as they would eat their oats, went into the cavalry or artillery or to baggage trains. What were left for recuperation at the close of the war were mongrels from Canada or the Indian and wild lands of the West, and such other lazy brutes as our good farmers would not impose upon the government with or later were condemned by the army buyers. These were largely of the Abdallah type of horse, noted for coarseness, homeliness, also soft and lazy constitutions. No one disputes the brute homeliness of the Abdallah horse, and in this the old and trite saying of "Like begets like" is exemplified in descendants, with which our country is flooded. The speed element of which we boast was left in our mares of Arabian blood through Clay and Morgan, but was so limited in numbers as to be an apology for our present time standard in the breeding of fancy horses. Knowing that Abdallah blood produced no speed, and being largely ignorant as to the breeding of our mares, which were greatly scattered over the land after the war, some kind of a guess had to be made as to the possibility of the colts we were breeding, hence the time standard fallacy. But it has ruined enough men, and gone far enough. Upon Lieutenant Robertson's proposition, a turn can be made, and a solid base for blood with breeding of all American horses can be demanded by the government for the country's good.