HORSE-BREEDING 181 



tion, at the University of Cambridge," in the reign of Queen Anne, 

 He was " Nineteen Hands High, and Four Yards Long from his 

 Face to his Rump. The Hke Beast for Bigness was never seen in 

 the World before. Vivat Eegina ! " 



Stock-breeding, as appHed to both cattle and sheep, was the 

 haphazard union of nobody's son with everybody's daughter. On 

 open-field farms parish bulls were only selected for the quahty 

 in which Mr. Shandy's pet, so strenuously denounced by Obadiah, 

 was alleged to be wanting. When prizes were offered for the 

 longest legs, it is not surprising that aU over the country were 

 scattered tall, raw-boned, wall-sided cattle, and lean, leggy, 

 unthrifty sheep. Our ancestors, however, were not unwise in their 

 generation. Length of leg was necessary, when animals had to 

 traverse miry lanes and " foundrous " highways, and roam for 

 miles in search of food. Size of bone served the ox in good stead 

 when he had to draw a heavy plough through stiff soil. But a 

 time was rapidly approaching when beef and mutton were to be 

 more necessary than power of draught or fineness of wool. Bake- 

 well was the agricultural opportunist who saw the impending change, 

 and knew how it should be met. By providing meat for the milHon, 

 he contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright 

 or Watt. There is some foundation for the statement that many 

 monuments have been reared in Westminster Abbey to the memory 

 of men who less deserved the honour than Robert Bakewell. 



Cart-horses also shared Bake well's attention. Before his day 

 principles of breeding had been Httle studied except in the interests 

 of sport. In the reign of Richard II. the principal breeding counties 

 had been Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and the East and West 

 Ridings of Yorkshire. Men in armour needed big weight-carrying 

 horses. But in the fifteenth century, horses, hke the rest of English 

 hve-stock, seem to have dwindled in size. The legislature was 

 alarmed ; Henry VIII. attempted to improve their height by the 

 importation of the best foreign breeds, and by sumptuary laws 

 which prescribed the number and height of the horses that were 

 to be kept by various classes of his subjects. EHzabeth's introduc- 

 tion of coaches created a new need ; if the invention of gunpowder 

 and the disuse of armour displaced the " great horse " in war, he 

 found a new place between the shafts. Shakespeare's plays 

 illustrate some of the changes which approximated the Stewart 

 standard of horse-flesh to modern ideals. The courser, which in 



