The Horse-hreeding Industry in Yorkshire. Ill 



the Cleveland Bay, and is bred also, to some extent, all along 

 the coast of the East Riding, including Holdei-ness. This place 

 is nowadays, however, no longer such a noted Coach Horse 

 breeding district as it was in times past, the numbers of the 

 breed here having become much diminished as compared with 

 what they used to be a generation ago. Some fifty years 

 back the Coach Horse also had a strong foothold, and was 

 extensively bred between York, Selby, Howden, and Market 

 Weighton ; in fact, some of the oldest coaching strains originated 

 here in Howdenshire, but after the sixties the breed was 

 gradually ousted in this district by the Hackney. The Druid, 

 alluding in his writings to the Coach Horses bred here in 

 his time, speaks of them as follows : — " Among the coachers we 

 look in vain for the old Cleveland bays, such as Howdenshire 

 loved, and which once drew the heavy family chariots at 

 six miles an hour. They have been gradually crossed up 

 with blood sires, so that if any foal from a Cleveland mare 

 falls smarter than usual, the breeder can cut its tail and 

 call it a hunter." This throws an interesting side-light 

 upon the early history of the modern Coach Horse breed, 

 showing how certain strains of it were developed in East 

 Yorkshire upon a Cleveland foundation, and incidentally 

 affording a proof that the Cleveland Bay was in former times 

 a good deal bred in the East Riding. The old breed here 

 was, however, eventually completely transformed into coaching 

 stock through crossing with the thoroughbred, and this in its 

 turn has largely sunk its identity in the general half-bred stock 

 as found in East Yorkshire at the present tirne. 



One of the various thoroughbred stallions which originally 

 played a part in the evolution of the Yorkshire Coach Horse 

 was Don Juan, whose sire was the famous racer, Orui/le, and 

 who, in the early part of last century, stood in the Catterick 

 Bridge district, and there got some excellent coaching stock 

 out of Cleveland mares. Another one was Paulinus, a sire 

 of some note about 1835, but he was a cocktail, having had 

 a stain in his pedigree ; and several other old foundation 

 stallions from which coaching strains are descended were also 

 of cocktail breed. Of the colts resulting from the cross 

 between the thoroughbred and the Cleveland Bay, some were 

 kept entire by their owners, and in their turn used as sires, 

 and so a distinctive type of half-bred Coach Horse became 

 gradually established. The infusion of thoroughbred blood 

 into the breed, and its recruitment from fresh crosses between 

 the blood sire and Cleveland mare has been freely continued 

 in modern times. This stock had its position as a distinct 

 breed definitely regulated in 1886, when' its supporters formed 

 the Yorkshire Coach Horse Society, and founded a stud-book. 



