112 THE HORSE. 
fast time is to be made, as, for instance, what the Americans call “low in 
the two-thirties,” that is, a mile in little over the two and a half minutes, 
blood is almost equally in demand for that distance as for a longer, and 
the distress is nearly as great as in running a mile over the flat at New- 
market. Norfolk has long been celebrated for her breed of trotters, and _ 
these are still in considerable demand for our gigs and phaetons, but their 
trot is not soft enough to make them desirable hacks, and they are little 
used for that purpose. The same applies to the American trotters, which 
are kept to their waggons all over the States. The action of the Norfolk 
trotter is more showy than that of the American, chiefly because the eye 
is the sole test applied in this country, no purchaser caring for a faster 
pace than fourteen or fifteen miles an hour, and most contenting them- 
selves with twelve, whereas, on the other side of the Atlantic, the time-test 
is applied in all cases and the value of a horse is in proportion to what he 
can do with the stop-watch in the hand of his examiner. The action of 
our best trotters resembles that of the carriage-horse displayed at page 
110, but in the smaller animals it is somewhat shorter and sharper. 
The foot is not thrust forward so much as in the American, either before 
or behind, and hence there is more time lost in each step. In point of 
appearance and breeding, our gigsters and phaeton-horses are of all kinds 
from the pure thoroughbred to the strong but undersized carriage-horse 
CHAPTER VIIL 
AGRICULTURAL AND DRAY HORSES. 
THE OLD ENGLISH BLACK CART-HORSE— THE SUFFOLK CART-HORSE— THE IMPROVED 
LINCOLNSHIRE DRAY-HORSE—THE CLYDESDALE HORSE—OTHER MIXED BREEDS. 
THE OLD ENGLISH BLACK CART-HORSE. 
FRoM TIME IMMEMORIAL this country has possessed a heavy and com- 
paratively misshapen animal, the more active of which were formerly used 
as chargers or pack-horses, while the others were devoted to the plough, 
and, as time wore on, to the lumbering vehicles of the period of Queen 
Einzabeth and her immediate successors. In colour almost invariably 
black, with a great fiddle-case in the place of head, and feet concealed in 
long masses of hair, depending from misshapen legs, he united flat sides, 
upright shoulders, mean and narrow hips, and very drooping quarters. 
Still, plain as he was, he did his work willingly, and would pull at a 
dead weight till he dropped. This last quality was necessary enough 
at the first introduction of wheel carriages, for the roads were so bad that 
the wheels were constantly buried up to their naves in the deep ruts cut 
into them at the bottom of every hill, or wherever there was not a clear 
course for the water to run off. True pulling was, therefore, considered 
the first and most essential attribute of the cart or heavy carriage horse ; 
and as without it the traveller or carter would be constantly left in the 
“Slough of Despond,” it is not to be wondered at that such was the case. 
The figure of the war-horse, as represented in the Dake of Newcastle’s 
celebrated treatise, was common enough fifty years ago among the agricul- 
tural horses of any district but that immediately north of the estuary of 
