Why not think also of increasing our resources by better cultivation, by liberal feeding, by choosing, as I have said above, among the race of the country, the most perfect types and those most likely to correct what is vicious while they impart their own good qualities? Methods of this kind, pursued for a long time and persistently, are alone capable of preparing, without inconvenience, for a foreign cross. Drain your wet meadows, irrigate your hill-sides, fertilize your soil by the use of improving manures, make productive fields everywhere, create meadows, grow heavy oats, enlarge your stables and make them clean, healthy and airy. When you have done this, then, but not before, you can cross your races with foreign blood, more delicate than yours and accustomed to and requiring greater care and attention. I know that this slowly progressive manner does not possess the sympathies of those who, at the commencement, are restless at not having already reached the goal. But it is sure and free from errors, whilst the other, (France has but too many examples of this), after money squandered and years wasted, reduces the breeder who has recourse to it to a more miserable condition than that from which he wished to escape. Our _furia francese_, which renders us, irresistible in war, our fancy for new fashions, which gives birth to those wonders which the world hails with ecstacy, and our proverbial inconstancy, cause us almost always to go astray in breeding. Fashion has no sooner praised horses of such and such a race, of this or that model, or such and such a coat, than we must immediately produce the like, without first ascertaining whether or no our race be prepared for crossing with them. The result of such crosses would be about as valuable as a discussion between a fishwoman and an academician! Nature, left to herself, is a thousand times more intelligent than the man of systems. Are there ever found, among the wild animals, among lions, tigers, stags, chamois, etc., either spavins, tumors, periodical inflammations, or any of those thousand infirmities with which our domestic horse is afflicted?—And here is the reason: in the rutting season, the possession of the females becomes the incitement to bloody battles. It is always the strongest, the most vigorous, the bravest, the most venturesome, and the best made stallion, which receives as a reward for his victory, the submission and the admiring love of the harem. But I assume Perche prepared, by numerous and good crossings of the race within itself, to try, with more sureness, foreign crossings. Two principal types, as we have just seen, are presented for this: the Arab type and the English, which is itself derived from the Arab. The foreign cross I only speak of with diffidence, because with it I enter unknown regions of inductions and perhaps, alas! into ways of deception and ruin, if it is not effected with the greatest prudence and judgment.