There have been so many books written about horses that in offering a new one I feel that an explanation, if not an apology, is due. And I am embarrassed as to how to frame the explanation without seeming to reflect on the books previously given to the public. Nothing could be further from my desire. Most of these previous books have been devoted to special kinds or types of horses without any effort to cover a very broad field. Some others have been frankly partizan with the avowed purpose of proving that this type or that was the only one that was worth serious consideration. All these are interesting, but valuable chiefly to the careful student bent on going into the subject of horse breeding and horse training in all of its branches. To do this an ordinary reader would have to study half a hundred books with the danger of becoming confused in the multiplicity of theories and conflicting statements and with the final result of knowing as little in the end as in the beginning. In this modest little volume I have endeavored briefly to show how the horses in America have been developed and have come to be what they are to-day. If I have succeeded even partly in my purpose I will have my ample reward; if I fail, my book will end on a few dusty library shelves along with hundreds of others on kindred subjects. There is a peculiar characteristic of most writers on the horse. Let a man be ever so fair in his ordinary business and social life, he is apt, when he becomes interested in horses, to throw away his judicial attitude and change into an advocate who sees only one side. When his interest in that one side carries him to the length of writing, the tendency is to be so partizan that he is even discourteous to others who do not agree with him. This queer disposition to wrangle and dispute is due, no doubt, to the fact that horse breeding is not yet by any means an exact science, and the data, guiding even those who exercise the greatest care and intelligence, is not trustworthy. We do not know with certainty how any of the great types has been produced, for the beginnings of all of them are covered up by fictions, based on traditions not recorded, but handed down from generation to generation, or on fictions that have been manufactured with ingenious mendacity. All this is a pity, but there is no help for it now. What we can do is to tell what is true, show what has been demonstrated by known achievements and go on working in the material that we have at hand, so that we may assist in increasing the great property value that this country has in its horses.