370 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



ancient heritage of service on the battlefield. Taught by the 

 experience of the Boer war and the part played by the 4'7 inch 

 guns at Ladysmith, our War Office has now furnished the First 

 Army Corps with a brigade of heavy guns, each of which is drawn 

 by six Shire horses, not ridden however but led by the drivers. 

 Arthur Young considered that the only other British cart- 

 horse worthy of mention along with the large old-English black 

 horse was the sorrel-coloured Suffolk Punch, for which the 

 sandy district round Woodbridge is especially noted. The 

 origin of this famous stock has never been clearly traced, 

 not even by Mr Herman Biddell in the Suffolk Stud Book^ : in 

 his summary of his history of the breed he states that " the 

 original, or what may be called the indigenous stock, dates 

 as far back as the year 1700," and he assumes that "at the 

 commencement of the century it was as distinct a breed as 

 it was when Arthur Young, who was born in 1740, was old 

 enough to make observations on agriculture, for that writer 

 speaks of them as a distinct type, which had been the character 

 of the breed beyond the recollection of any man then living, 

 and Young seems to have been unable to gather any informa- 

 tion regarding their origin or introduction." According to 

 Arthur Young the typical old Suffolk horse was " sorrel colour, 

 very low in the fore-end, had a large misshapen head, with 

 slouching heavy ears, a great carcass and short legs, an uglier- 

 horse," as the author says, " could hardly be viewed." 



' The large head, thick body and sorrel colour all point to the 

 animal having been chiefly developed from old European horses 



I- of the Solutre type. Mr Biddell holds that " we have reliable 

 data for assuming that the breed of Suffolk horses has been 

 in the eastern part of the county for one hundred and eighty 

 years ; how much longer no one can tell." The extract from 

 Robert Reyce's Breviary of Suffolk given a few pages back 

 enables us to carry back the history of the great horses of 

 Suffolk a century earlier than Mr Biddell. Although Reyce 



1 Vol. I. p. 72 (1880). I am indebted for this extract as well as that from 

 Eeyce to my friend Sir Ernest Clarke. Mr Biddell has also written an excellent 

 section on the history of the Suffolk Punch in Heavy Horses (Live-Stock Hand- 

 books, No. III.), pp. 37 sqq. 



