52 ENGLAND'S HORSES. 



CHAPTER VI 



It will readily be remembered that about twenty years ago 

 an act of the legislature entitled " The Irish Incumbered 

 Estates Act, &c.," was instrumental in introducing into that 

 country many English and Scotch farmers. The small 

 fields and light scratchy husbandry of the old native system 

 happily fled before the innovatory lesson of the new comers. 

 Their heavy agricultural carts, ploughs, and other agrarian 

 implements, if calculated to so much advance farming 

 interests, had a materially opposite effect upon the far- 

 famed breed of Irish half-bred horses. Ireland being 

 essentially a tillage country, the size and capacity for 

 draught and burthen of her horses had a dominant influence 

 upon the character of her implements of husbandry that 

 were to be worked by horse-power. For the increased 

 burthens produced by the imported system of agriculture it 

 was considered that a weightier and more cumbrous animal 

 than the native half-bred, active Irish horse was necessary ; 

 and in the plenitude of unbridled ignorance the convenient 

 but ruinous expedient was hit upon of crossing upon Irish 

 mares — so noted for a laro^e infusion through various 

 channels of the purest Eastern blood — huge Clydesdale 

 and other ponderous horses. The natural offspring of such 

 a union all physiologists can quickly define. A nondescript 

 brute with a heterogeneous mixture of parts ; a large head 

 Upon a blood-hke neck — a huge elephantine carcase upon 



