The pacer of Canada, generally believed to be of French origin, has long been an object of diligent investigation, without reaching any satisfactory results. Again and again I have gone over the first half-century of the history of the French plantations on the St. Lawrence; examining everything in the English language that held out any hope of throwing light upon the question, but nothing was revealed. The trouble was that my search stopped a little short of the date when the first horses arrived. The management of the affairs of the plantations on the St. Lawrence being in a company located in France, there was a lack of vigor, not much growth, and still less profits to the projectors of the colony. The energies of the people seemed to be directed almost wholly to collecting and trading in peltry instead of building up a commonwealth from the productions of the soil. For half a century these primitive people lived without horses. Their farms, if they could be called farms, all had a frontage on the water, running back in narrow strips to the highlands. They did their plowing with cattle and their canoes supplied the place of the saddle horse, the family carriage and the lumber wagon to carry the scanty surplus of their little farms to market. At last the company in France, holding direction and control, got out of the way, and the king of France assumed direct authority over the affairs of the plantation. On June 30, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec, as viceroy, with a numerous suite of retainers and a regiment of French soldiers. Two months later a large fleet arrived bringing many colonists, embracing artisans, farmers, peasants, etc., with their families, and a good number of horses, the first that had ever been seen on the St. Lawrence. There is a tradition that a horse had been sent over to the governor in 1642, but it is probable he was lost on the voyage, as the older people of the colony had no recollection or knowledge of any such animal. These colonists came from the ancient province of Picardy, not now to be found on the modern maps of France, but it lay on the English Channel in the extreme northwest of France. As it is expressly stated that these colonists came from Picardy, it is fair to conclude that the horses came from that portion of the kingdom also. At this period in history there had been no wars between France and England for many years, and commercial as well as social intercourse had long been cultivated between the people on both sides of the channel. We know but little of the early horse history of France, but in our own time we know that France has been largely benefited by the diffusion of the English blood among her horse stock, so we may conclude that if a man in Kent had a horse that a man in Picardy wanted, he very soon got him in the way of legitimate trade. I think, therefore, it is safe to conclude that the horse stock of Northwestern France and the horse stock of England were