Man has improved some qualities of the horse. He has increased its
speed, perhaps, but only for short distances. Our race horses of to-day
would make a sorry record with those of days no longer past than those
of the "pony express," to say nothing of the couriers of centuries ago,
because they have been made to deteriorate in vigor and endurance. We
have ponderous, heavy horses to-day; but they can not do as much work
before the plow or dray as those of the eighteenth century. We can not
point anywhere to horses produced by breeding that are the equals of the
horses of the days of chivalry. They lack not only in vigor and
hardihood, but in intelligence. As the perfect symmetry of development
by the course of nature has been destroyed by man the intelligence of
the animal lessened. Whenever the hand of man has touched his equine
friend it has been only to mar.

This decrease in the excellence of the horse can not be shifted from man
to time. One instance alone demonstrates the unfairness of this. The
Andalusians are now mere ponies, yet they are the descendants of those
noble beasts ridden to victory by the Spanish chivalry in the days when
the valor of the horse was as important as the valor of the knightly
rider. Taken from their hills and valleys to serve in the haunts of men,
and to be subjected to the arts of breeding, they have sadly
degenerated. But the horses of the Spanish explorers of both North and
South America escaped, and to-day the descendants of these same Spanish
horses are, under the nurture of nature and nature's ways, the superb
wild horses of the new world. They are the work of nature; the
Andalusian ponies are the work of man's art.

As this degeneracy is the necessary co-existent of man's breeding, so
far as it is produced by this cause it can not be escaped. But a good