ENGLISH BREEDS 115 



as a guide for the conduct of the breeding operations of the latter, are as 

 worthy of credence amongst impartial men as is the dictum of a contem- 

 porary horse-raiser who transmits all information concerning his horses to 

 the editor of a stud-book. 



The exact sources from which the Hackney originally sprang nearly 

 two centuries ago are never likely to be known — that is to say, of course, 

 so far as the dams of the original animals are concerned. On the sires' side, 

 however, the most ample and sufficient evidence is forthcoming, and many 

 animals now before the public can be traced back to the Darley Arabian 

 and other pillars of the Tlioroughhred Stud-hook. A very tenable theory 

 that has been propounded as throwing light upon the origin of the Hackney, 

 is that which suggests that Eastern stallions, such as the horse above re- 

 ferred to and the Godolphin Arabian, were put to many sorts of mares, and 

 whilst the offspring of their unions with gallopers were utilized for racing 

 purposes, their sons and daughters from trotting and Flemish mares formed 

 the tap-roots of the various strains of Hackney. The above contention is, 

 however, nothing more than conjecture, founded, it is true, upon very 

 substantial grounds, though conjecture all the same; but regarding the 

 antiquity of the Hackney under the name by which he is still recognized 

 there is no c|uestion whatsoever. This is most clearly demonstrated by Mr. 

 H. F. Euren in his preface to volume 1 of the Hackney Stud-hook, which 

 contains a veritable mine of wealth so far as references to the breeding of 

 this class of horse is concerned. John Laurence, too, in his Philosophiccd 

 and Practical Treatise on Horses, which was published in the course of 

 the eighteenth century, alludes definitely to the Hackney; and again in his 

 History of the Riding Horse the last-named writer associates the Hackney 

 with the Roadster as an acknowledged variety of horse. 



One might go even further back, were it necessary to do so, to discover 

 references to the Hackney in ancient writings, for at so remote a period as 

 A.D. 1350 the following sentence appears in the Vision of Piers Ploivman, 

 " Hakeneyes hadde thei none, bote hakeneyes to hyre ". The very expres- 

 sion itself bears evidence of the antiquity of a distinct variety of horse, for 

 as Mr. Euren very forcibly puts it, there can be but very little ground 

 for doubting that the word Hackney is derived from the Anglo-Saxon 

 hnegan, which meant to neigh. There appear substantial reasons, 

 therefore, for assuming that the mares of this variety, and very possibly, 

 as suggested above, of Flemish blood as well, were put to the Eastern 

 stallions, which effected so much improvement in .the Thoroughbred, and 

 that from these unions have sprung the strains of Hackney that can be 

 traced back to the eighteenth century. 



One thing about the horses of one hundred and fifty years ago that is 



