Walking Horses

We are glad to notice that many of our western fairs are offeriug handsome premiums for the fastest walking horses. There is no disguising the fact that a good walk is the most useful gait that a geueral-purpose horse can possess ; and if one-half the attention were paid to cultivating this gait, and breediug with a view to its transmission, that is now given to that of training and breeding trotters, horses that could walk rive miles an hour would soon be as abundan t as 2:30 trotters now are. The trouble now is, that the whole country is possessöd of a mania for tast trotters, and us soon as the colt is broken to halter, no matter whether he be thoroughbred, Conestoga, jNorman, Clydesdale, Haiubletonian or Canadian, he is put to trottiug. The whole couutry is engaged in training trotters, frum the plowboy iu the field to the professional on the track, to the utter neglect of that more useful, every-day gait, the walk. Even the importers of draft stallions from Europe have caught the iufection, and iustetul of bringing the best walkers, we only hear of thair " great trottiug action." It is time to put an end to this nonsense : the gait for a draft horse is preeminently a walk, while nothing adds more to the ability of the roadster to make a long journey in good time than a walkiug gait that will carry him along at the rate of h've miles an hour. The first aim, when a colt is broken to the harneas, should be to edúcate him to a good, square, fast walk, and after that has been done, if you eau get him to trot fast, so much the better. Oue of the most successiul brei;ders of trotting horses in America has often remarked to us that he would not keep a horse on his place that was not a fast walker, and that he had invariably found that the fasteut walkers made the fastest trotters. It is a positive luxury to ride or drive a horse that can walk off with you at the rate of five miles an hour. It is such a relief to teel, when you ease up your horse from his swinging trot or ïope, that you have not come to a stand - stil I, but that you are yet mukingrespectable progresa. ïor our own private use on the road, the walk is the gait that we prize above all others, and anything that promises to increase thenumber of fast walkers shall receive our heartv enoourageinent.