368 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



proportions of the horse were not due to the clumsiness of the 

 sculptor, but to the fact that King William rode on a Dutch 

 horse. From what we have seen above of the history of the 

 horses of the Low Countries and of England, we need have no 

 hesitation in concluding that William of Orange rode one of the 

 Great Horses of his country, and that when the statue was 

 erected a few years after his overthrow of James II, the artist 

 modelled the king's steed from a real charger. 



Arthur Young, writing at the close of the eighteenth 

 century, declares that in England and Scotland there were 

 only two kinds of cart-horses worthy of attention the large, 

 black, old-English horse, " the produce principally of the shire 

 counties in the heart of England, and the sorrel-coloured Suffolk 

 Punch, for which the sandy tract of country near Woodbridge is 

 famous." Young rightly regarded the Clydesdale breed as simply 

 the Scotch variety of the Great Horse. According to Mr Reynolds, 

 black and grey were held to indicate purity of breeding in the 

 shire horse, whilst I may also point out that shire horses, like 

 the great horses, frequently have stars or blazes on the face and 

 white stockings. The great tendency to such markings in the 

 shire breed is clearly demonstrated by the fact that seven out 

 of eight of these horses figured by Sir Walter Gilbey 1 are thus 

 distinguished. The same features characterise ' Stroxton Tom ' 

 (Fig. 103), the champion stallion at the London shows of the 

 Shire Horse Society in 1902 and 1903. In these markings as 

 well as in their dark colour we have clear proof of that North 

 African blood which began to be infused into the horses of 

 North-western Europe from about the second century B.C. 



But the military career of the English black horse did not 

 terminate completely with the disuse of armour, for his qualities 

 as a war-horse were too great to be overlooked, and all that was 

 needed was to render him lighter and more active by the 

 infusion of better blood. Hence it comes to pass that all our 

 heavy cavalry, with the exception of some regiments mounted 

 on bays and greys, has continued down to our own times to be 

 mounted on black horses 2 . The infusion of thoroughbred blood 



1 Op. cit. pp. 52 sqq. 2 Hamilton Smith, op. cit. p. 270. 



