62 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



sometime between 1700 and 1706. The success of his progeny 

 helped to remove the prejudice against Eastern blood, and the 

 succeeding years saw many other importations, Prince George 

 himself becoming active in the encouragement of importation. 

 Next to the Darley Arabian, the most influential sire was the 

 so-called Godolphin Arabian, who was almost certainly a Barb. 

 He was a brown-bay stallion imported from France, where, as 

 the story runs, he was so little appreciated that he had actually 

 drawn a cart on the streets of Paris. He is believed to have been 

 foaled in Barbary about 1724, and the first of his progeny in 

 England was foaled in 1732. 



Before this, however, there had been considerable interest in 

 racing, and, by the process of selection, supplemented by fre- 

 quent importation, there had been great improvement in the 

 native stock. James I and Charles II had both been horse 

 lovers and both had imported Eastern horses, the latter in par- 

 ticular having sent his master of horse abroad for the purchase 

 of breeding animals. There was, therefore, by the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century an excellent foundation stock to build 

 upon. The two historic animals mentioned above doubtless owe 

 their influence as much to that fact as to their own undoubted 

 merit. But in spite of the interest in the subject, the annals of 

 horse breeding show no such striking individual achievements 

 in the building up of new and improved types as those of Bake- 

 well with sheep and the Collings with cattle. 



Draft horses. The modern British breeds of draft horses 

 were built up mainly in the nineteenth century, though here, 

 as in the case of the Thoroughbred, the native stock formed 

 the foundation. The Shire is probably the direct descendant, 

 with relatively few admixtures of foreign blood, of the old Eng- 

 lish cart horse, a large, coarse, powerful animal, usually black 

 in color, but not a very distinct breed. The Suffolk Punch, per- 

 haps the first of the modern breeds to become an established 



