414 THE HOUSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



probably had that famous horse at the battle of the Boyne. 

 The mixture of such horses with the native mares laid the 

 foundation of the Irish thoroughbred strain, and fresh thorough- 

 bred blood was continually being introduced, until by the 

 middle of the eighteenth century there were in Ireland up- 

 wards of one hundred imported stallions. From that time 

 onwards the history of the Irish thoroughbred is bound up 

 with that of the English racing stock, but the Irish thorough- 

 bred has continued to preserve traits derived doubtless from 

 the Irish mares first mated with the imported sires of Libyan 

 blood. 



As the Irish hunters (Fig. 130) are the progeny of the 

 Irish thoroughbred and the Irish cart-mares, on the number 

 and quality of the latter must depend one of the most 

 precious productions of Ireland. The hunters bred in Ros- 

 common are especially noted for their size and great develop- 

 ment of bone, though they are occasionally coarse, whilst, 

 though the horses reared on the rich grass lands of Meath 

 and Westmeath are not more fleshy and are scarcely equal 

 in bone, they are, however, more shapely than those of Ros- 

 common. The increase of tillage during the French war at the 

 close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century gave a great impetus to the breeding of agricultural 

 horses, as the bullock rapidly ceased to be the tiller of the soil, 

 although in certain localities he has lingered on to our own day, 

 both for the plough and the cart. The growth in the number 

 of cart-mares naturally increased the production of weight- 

 carrying hunters, but unfortunately since the repeal of the 

 Corn Laws the shrinkage of Irish tillage has gone on steadily 

 and there has been a corresponding diminution in the number 

 and quality of Irish cart-mares. The larger farmers were the 

 first to lay down their lands in permanent grass, and gradually 

 the cart-mares only remained in the hands of smaller farmers 

 who continued to till their ground, but, as was naturally to be 

 expected, the mares kept by the latter were, as a rule, not of so 

 good a quality as those formerly maintained by the wealthy 

 farmers. The agricultural depression of the last quarter of 

 a century has too often compelled the small farmers to sell their 



