328 THE IRISH HORSE-BREEDING INDUSTRY. 



breeder can never tell what typ° of animal he will have presented to him as 

 a result of the union of unpedigreed parents ; the progeny may " throw 

 back " to an ancestor of several generations previously, and thus present 

 points or characters altogether at variance with those which might have 

 been expected from the appearance of the sire and dam. So it is with 

 hunter-breeding ; and so it will be unless steps are taken to found or estab- 

 lish a breed of mares possessing the necessary pedigree, and capable of 

 imparting size and substance to their progeny — points in which Irish mares 

 have always excelled. 



Because of the great reputation which the Irish-bred hunter has earned 

 abroad, there is a very general impression that it is only for the production 

 of hunters that Ireland is worthy of notice as a horse-breeding country. 

 This is far from being the case. Famous though the country is for its 

 hunters, the number of animals of this class annually produced bears but a 

 small proportion to the number of other horses bred. Last year [iQOi] the 

 number of horses in Ireland was about 565,000, and of these it may be 

 assumed that 100,000 were brood mares. Of the 70,000 odd foals produced 

 by these mares, it is safe to assume that not more than 'ten per cent, will 

 ever change hands as hunters ; of the remainder, the great bulk will become 

 vanners, troopers, carriage horses, or animals retained for general purpose 

 work on the thousands of small farms which stud the country. A certain 

 percentage will also be of the heavy, cart-horse type ; but the number of 

 heavy horses bred in the country is very small — remarkably so in comparison 

 with the corresponding figures for England and Scotland. 



Except in a few districts in the neighbourhood of the larger towns, the 

 breeding of cart-horses of the Clydesdale and Shire type is but little carried 

 on in Ireland. Sires of these breeds have been tried in many districts, and 

 in some places they have been found to give good results by imparting more 

 substance to the native stock ; but the advantage of the influence exercised 

 by them in this direction has been confined to localities in which the soil is 

 heavy and the farms of fairly large size. Over the greater part of the 

 country neither of these conditions holds, and wherever the farms run small 

 and the land light the smaller, smarter, and more generally useful native 

 cart-horse continues to more than hold its own against its massive rivals, 

 the Clydesdale and the Shire. 



These native cart-horses are of very mixed breeding. They are got, for 

 the most part, by common " country sires," and the latter are bred every way 

 mid anyway. Some of them have a dash — often very remote — of the 

 thoroughbred in them, and in many districts some are not altogether free 

 from an admixture of Clydesdale or Shije blood ; but, whatever their breed- 

 ing, it is generally conceded that for whatever merits they possess as stock- 

 getters they are principally indebted to the strong infusion of " old Irish " 

 blood which they inherit. It is to this that their progeny chiefly owe the 

 strong, clean bone, the hardy constitutions, and the great grit and deter- 

 mination v/hich Irish-bred horses are noted for displaying when called upon 

 to perform any particularly trying class of work. 



It is from the ranks of these '" promiscuously-bred " light horses that the 

 majority ot the animals which are sold every year at Irish fairs as troopers, 

 vanners, and Ccurriage horses are recruited. Many of these, troopers, van- 

 ners, and general purpose light horses, are, it is true, got by thoroughbreds ; 

 when the gets of thoroughbred sires fail to pass muster as hunters they are 

 sent to join the common throng, and are known in the trade as " mis-fits." 



