164 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



seems, also, that long after they had ceased to be known on the 

 other side their descendants were still known by the same desig- 

 nation in Virginia. From the history of the times, it appears 

 that a wealthy Irish gentleman invested quite largely in shipping 

 live stock to Virginia, and there can hardly be a doubt that his 

 shipments included some of the Irish Hobbies. 



While the opening of the seventeenth century witnessed the 

 supremacy of the English pacer, in the uses and enjoyments of 

 the lives of the people, during the whole course of its succeeding 

 years he was battling for his existence, and at its close he was 

 nearly extinct. At the close of Queen Anne's reign there were 

 still a few Galloways left, but in the early Georges there were no 

 longer any survivors, and Great Britain was without a pacer in 

 the whole realm. The extinction of a race of horses that had 

 been the delight of the kings, queens, nobility, and gentry of a 

 great nation for many centuries is, perhaps, without a precedent 

 in the history of any civilized people, and the causes which pro- 

 duced this wonderful result are well worthy of careful study. In 

 looking into these causes we must consider the facts as we find 

 them. 



As we have no guide, either historic, linguistic or ethnographic,, 

 by which we can certainly determine the blood of the original 

 inhabitants of the British Isles, it is not remarkable that we 

 should be in profound ignorance as to the blood of their horses. 

 They were, doubtless, like their masters, of mixed origin, and 

 through all the centuries their appearance would indicate that 

 they have been bred and reared in a nomadic or semi-wild state, 

 in which only the toughest and fleetest had survived. A good 

 many years ago I met with a theory, advanced by somebody, that 

 the original horse stock of Britain came from the North, but 

 there were -no reasons given to support it. I have no hesitation 

 in accepting this theory, as far as it distinguishes between the 

 North and the South, for some Northern countries produce vast 

 numbers of natural pacers, as Eussia, for instance, but I have 

 never learned that any Southern country produced pacers. Cer- 

 tainly the shaft horse of the Eussian drosky has been a flying 

 pacer for generations, and great numbers of them are produced 

 in Eussia, especially in the eastern part of the empire. As these 

 pacers are produced in a natural and semi-wild state, it must be 

 conceded that habits of action have been inherited from their 

 ancestors in the remote past. Historically, we know that the 



