114 VAEIETIES OF THE HORSE 



agriculturalists who adopted them as means of locomotion became lukewarm 

 in their support of the breed that had served them faithfully for many 

 years. Their neglect of the Hackney perhaps was only natural, for the 

 horse was too light for farm-work, and the old-day farmer was not the 

 sort of man to continue breeding an animal for wliich he had reduced uses, 

 and for which he did not prophesy a large popular demand. The result 

 was the partial decadence of the breed, which might possibly have become 

 entirely extinct were it not for the loyalty and devotion to it evinced in 

 a most practical form by a few old admirers, who stood by it during the 

 period of its adversity, and who are now reaping a rich reward for their 

 constancy to the horse. 



Unquestionably, however, the rescue of the Hackney from ultimate 

 extinction — for the old breeders and their descendants who had held on to 

 the blood were getting fewer and farther between — is due to the action 

 of the members of the Hackney Horse Society, who for the past few- 

 years have laboured with the object before them of bringing the great 

 merits of this class of horse before the public, with results that must 

 have exceeded by far the most sanguine anticipations of the originators of 

 the movement. At the same time it may be mentioned, as a further 

 proof of the value of their efforts, that the gentlemen who were spending 

 their time and their money in furthering a very patriotic movement had to 

 encounter one or two unforeseen difficulties, the defeat of which has un- 

 doubtedly rendered the success that has attended their labours still more 

 remarkable. The chief ol)stacle which they had to overcome was the 

 erroneous statements that were made to the effect that the Hackney was 

 not a distinct variety, and consequently could not be expected to breed 

 true; whilst even the institution of a Stud-book was received with expres- 

 sions of hostile criticism in certain quarters. 



There can, however, be no doubt whatever that many a Hackney pedi- 

 gree is as long and as clear as the most fastidious breeder could desire, for 

 most of the staunchest supporters of the variety were as careful as any 

 breeder of the Thoroughbred horse in preserving accurate records of their 

 studs, and so far as the writer can see, there is no leoitimate eround for 

 stigmatizing these men either as rogues or fools, one of which they must 

 have been if they had manuftictured pedigrees, or been deceived themsehes 

 concerning the breeding of their horses. True it is, of course, that until 

 a few yeai's ago the Hackney had remained unhonoured by a stud-book; 

 but all such volumes are at first necessarily things of threads and patches, 

 being manufiictured from information afforded their compilei-s by breeders, 

 and surely therefore statements, substantiated as they are by documentary 

 evidence which has been handed down from fiither to son for generations 



