These examples (the pedigrees of the best horses), collected with care, will perhaps bring upon me the accusation of being a partisan of in-and-in breeding. In principle, I condemn its absolute use; but, within certain limits, I admit and advise it, especially in the commencement, when it becomes a question of founding and establishing a family designed to exercise a permanent influence upon the future improvement of a region. Uniting together vices of conformation, character, and temperament, is rendering them indelible for ever. Uniting quality, beauty, and aptitude, it is preserving the monopoly of these in a single family. Hence, I would like, when there appeared, on the turf or elsewhere, one of those envied types of which nature is generally so sparing, that judicious attempts, made with patience, should fix the qualities so apt to disappear, and collect, so to speak, all the sources whence they emanate. The brothers, sisters, and collaterals, should be included, but once only, in these crossings, which might even go back, if it were still time, as far as the grandsires and dams, on account of the resemblance noticed between ancestors and their grandchildren. Finally, the truly valuable and completely successful results of a family thus strengthened should be coupled according to the rules of intelligent crossing to the equally confirmed representatives of some other excellent family, fit to form new offspring. [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER IV. OUGHT THE GRAY COLOR OF THE PERCHERON TO BE INFLEXIBLY MAINTAINED? Formerly I liked the gray horse very much, and have more than once praised this color. But time has dissipated my illusions. Thus, while acknowledging my former preferences for the gray horse over the horse of a different shade, I am now very far from showing myself exclusive, and quarreling with the mass of enlightened persons who seem desirous of adopting the dark colored coats. I only desire one thing, and that is to save the Percheron race, and to preserve to Perche its prosperity and its glory.