Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 413 



also at Agher, co. Meath, which his direct descendants still 

 enjoy and where a very large breed of horses said to be de- 

 scended from the Provost's own animals is still maintained^ It 

 is therefore probable that Dr Winter's horses were the 'great' 

 English horses of his own day (p. 366). This example suffices 

 to show how in Meath and Westmeath the native Irish horses 

 were gradually saturated with the blood of the large English 

 horses, from which the Shires and Suffolk Punches are de- 

 scended. 



It is a well-known fact that horses whose ancestors have 

 long been bred in Ireland are distinguished for their great de- 

 velopment of bone, and for their clean, flat, hard legs, free from 

 the. spongy softness of bone so characteristic of British horses. 

 As the infiltration of the blood of the English 'great horse' had 

 thus gone on slowly for a very long period, the Irish horses of 

 this mixed strain, owing to the extraordinary effects of the 

 Irish soil and climate, did not inherit the softness and flabbiness 

 found in the progeny of the Shires and Suffolk Punches intro- 

 duced towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the 

 Clydesdales brought in about half a century later. 



As the English draught-horses imported towards the end 

 of the eighteenth century produced an unsatisfactory progeny, 

 no further attempts were made to improve the breed in this 

 way. The heavier class of native animals, the genesis of which 

 I have just sketched, produced a better type of horse for the 

 needs of Irish farmers. These animals made good roadsters 

 and serviceable harness horses, and, though too coarse for 

 hunting, they had a high spirit and a natural turn for jumping, 

 inherited doubtless from their Hobby ancestors. It was the 

 crossing of such mares with the thoroughbred (Fig. 129) that 

 produced the Irish hunters. By the end of the seventeenth 

 century horses of so-called 'Oriental' blood had reached Ireland, 

 for example the Byerley Turk, brought to Ireland by his owner. 

 Captain Byerley, who served in the army of William III, and 



1 Mahaffy, loc. cit. My old friend Rev. T. T. Gray, Senior Fellow of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, of Carn Park, co. Westmeath, tells me that these animals, on 

 which he himself has ridden, are of great size, and that the breed seems certainly 

 derived from the Provost's horses. 



