IMPROVEMENT IN FARM-HORSES 355 



not surprising that comparatively little attention had been paid to 

 horses for agricultural purposes. Yet here, too, some progress was 

 made, particularly from the point of view of specialisation. The 

 Clydesdales were coming to the front as rivals to old English breeds. 

 Beauty was not the strong point of the " Sorrel-coloured Suffolk 

 Punch." Nor was he any longer suited to the pace required in the 

 modern hunting-field or on the improved roads. But in 1837 it 

 was recognised that his unrivalled power of throwing his whole 

 weight into the collar fitted him pre-eminently for farm work. 

 A similar change was passing over the Cleveland Bay. Threatened 

 with extinction by the disappearance of coaches, he was found to be 

 invaluable on light-soil farms. So also a definite place was assigned 

 to another breed known to the sixteenth century. The " Large 

 Black Old English Cart-horse," which Young calls " the produce 

 principally of the Shire counties in the heart of England," was, to 

 some extent, experimented upon by Bakewell. But the develop- 

 ment of the breed belongs to a later date than the first half of the 

 Victorian era, and it is as a draught-horse that the Shire has been, 

 since 1879, patronised by Societies and enrolled in stud-books. 



It has been said that while the general standard of farming was 

 still extremely low, the best practice of individual farmers in 1837 

 has been little improved by the progress of seventy years. Pro- 

 duction has been considerably increased ; but the higher averages 

 are due to the wider diffusion of the best practices rather than to 

 any notable novelties, and it is in live-stock that real advance is 

 most clearly marked. If, however, we turn from the highest practice 

 of farming to the general conditions under which it was carried on, 

 or to the processes by which crops were cultivated, harvested, 

 and marketed, the contrast between 1837 and 1912 is almost 

 startling. 



In 1837 the open-field system still prevailed extensively. Hold- 

 ings were in general inconveniently small, though in some parts of 

 the country farms had been consolidated. Farm-buildings, often 

 placed at the extreme end of the holding, consisted of large barns 

 for storing and threshing corn, a stable and yard for cart-horses, a 

 shed for carts and waggons. But the cattle, worse housed than the 

 waggons, were huddled into draughty, rickety sheds, erected without 

 plan, ranged round a yard whence the liquid manure, freely diluted 

 from the unspouted roofs, ran first into a horse-pond, and thence 

 escaped into the nearest ditch. In these sheds the live-stock sub- 



