Cook VII. 



VARIETIES OF THE HORSE. 



9--..1 



go through any gTound, and activity sufficient to accomplish the most extraordinary leaps. As road, 

 sters these horses have ever proved valuable, uniting durability, ease, and safety with extreme docility. 

 In form they may be considered as affording a happy mixture of an improved hack with our old 

 English roadster. . . 



6237 The British varieties of saddle horse of more inferior description are very numerous, as cobs, 

 galloways, and ponies. Cobs are a thick, compact, hackney breed, from fourteen hands to fourteen hands 

 two inches high, in great request for elderly and heavy persons to ride, or to drive in low phaetons, &c. 

 Galloways and ponies are latelv in much request also for low chaises; a demand which will lead to a 

 cultivation of their form ; the 'number bred requires little increase, as several waste districts or moors 

 throughout England are already appropriated principally to the purpose of rearing ponies. 



6238 The British varieties of war or cavalry horse, and of carriage and cart horse, are considered to 

 have been derived from the German and Flemish breeds, meliorated by judicious culture. Most of the 

 superior varieties contain a mixture of Arabian or Spanish blood. Cavalry horses are found amongst the 

 larger sort of hacknevs ; and the observations made in the late wars sufficiently show the justice of the 

 selection. Except in a few unhappy instances, where a mistaken admiration of the Hulans had led to 

 selecting them too light, the English cavalry horse possessed a decided superiority over the best French 

 horses in strength and activity, as well as over the Germans, whose horses on the other hand, by their 

 bulk and heavy make, were incapable of seconding the efforts of the British dragoons. The coach, cha. 

 riot, and stage horses are derived many of them from the Cleveland bays, further improved by a mixture 

 of blood. Others are bred from a judicious union of blood and bone, made by the breeders in lorkshire, 

 Lincolnshire, and other midland counties. . . 



6239. The varieties of draught horse were originally as numerous as the districts in which they were 

 bred, each having its favourite breed ; but since the intercourse among farmers and breeders has been 

 greater, those in common use are so mixed as to render it difficult to determine of what variety they 

 partake' the most. At present the principally esteemed draught horses are the Suffolk punch, the Cleve- 

 land bay the black, and the Lanark or Clydesdale. The native breeds of draught horses of England, 

 Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, are much too small for the purposes of agricultural draught as now con- 

 ducted ; but by cultivation, the improved breeds pointed out have furnished such animals as are equal to 

 every thing required of them. . 



6240. The black horse ifi". 823 ), bred in the midland counties of England, is a noble and useful animal ; 



and furnishes those grand teams we see in the coal, 

 flour, and other heavy carts and waggons about London ; 

 where the immense weight of the animal's body assists 

 his accompanying strength to move the heaviest loads. 

 But the present system of farming requires horses of less 

 bulk and more activity for the usual agricultural pur- 

 poses, better adapted for travelling, and more capable of 

 enduring fatigue ; consequently this breed is seldom 

 seen in the improved farms. The black cart horse is 

 understood to have been formed, or at least to have been 

 brought to its present state, by means of stallions and 

 mares imported from the Low Countries ; though there 

 appears to be some difference in the accounts that have 

 been preserved, in regard to the places whence they were 

 originally brought, and to the persons who introduced 

 them. {Culley on Live Stock, p. 32., and Marshal's 

 Economy of the Midland Counties, vol i. p. 306.) Mar- 

 shal, under too confined a view, and probably prejudiced 

 against the breed on account of its fancied want of spirit, 

 as well as for the alleged tendency to become flat and 



pommiced in the feet, is most unreasonably severe on it, when he says, " the breed of grey rats, with 

 which this island has of late years been overrun, are not a greater pest in it than the breed of black fen 

 horses; at least while cattle' remain scarce as they are at present, and while the flesh of horses remains 

 to be rejected as an article of human food." {Marshal's Yorkshire, vol. ii. p. 164.) The present improved 

 sub-variety of this breed is said to have taken its rise in six Zealand mares, sent over from the Hague by 

 the late Lord Chesterfield, during his embassy at that court. 



6241. The Cleveland bays (Jig. 824.), which owe some of their most valuable properties to crosses with 



the race-horse, have been long celebrated as one of the best breeds in the island ; but they are said to have 

 degenerated of late. They are reared to a great extent in Yorkshire, the fanners of which county are 

 remarkable for their knowledge in every thing that relates to this species of live stock. In activity and 

 hardiness, these horses, perhaps, have no superior. Some capital hunters have been produced by putting 

 full-bred stallions to mares of this sort ; but the chief object latterly has been to breed coach-horses, and 

 such as have sufficient strength for a two-horse plough. Three of these horses draw a ton and a half of 

 coals, travelling sixty miles in twenty-four hours, without any other rest but two or three baits upon the 

 road ; and frequently perform this labour four times a week. 



6242. The Suffolk punch fig. 82.5.) is a very useful animal for rural labour, and is particularly esteemed 

 by the farmers of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, but the merit of this breed seems to consist more in 

 constitutional hardiness than in anv apparent superiority of shape. " Their colour is mostly yel- 

 lowish or sorrel, with a white ratch o'r blaze on their faces ■ the head large, ears wide, muzzle coarse, 



