341 SKIN, COLOUR, AND HAIR. 



characteristics of the Shire horse is to have hair on the legs. 

 The hair should be long and thin, finer in quality on the 

 mare than the stallion ; it should grow from the fetlock 

 above the knee, and the same behind the hock. By many 

 this is thought to be a useless appendage, and that this 

 abundance of hair is a cause of grease ; but it is not so 

 by any means. Hair is an indication of bone and size." 

 Mr. Frederick Street, in his History of the Shire Horse, 

 gives " plenty of long silky hair on the legs " as one of the 

 desirable points in the Shire horse. Mr. James Howard, 

 M.P., in his Notes on Cart-horses (Royal Agricultural 

 Journal, 1884), remarks that : " A grave doubt, however, 

 arises whether the profusion of hair and ' feather ' insisted 

 upon in show-yards and among the leading breeders of 

 Shire horses is really so essential to strength and con- 

 stitution as is generally asserted and believed. As a 

 farmer of heavy clay land — much of it hilly — which 

 requires very powerful horses in tillage and in carting, 

 I have long entertained doubts as to the policy of the 

 present tendency to such a profusion of hair. Breeders 

 not only contend for hair on the rear of the legs, but many 

 have also come to insist upon a mass of hair in front from 

 the knee downward, doubtless a characteristic of many of 

 the old Shire horses bred in Derbyshire early in the nine- 

 teenth century. Of course, no one contends that all this 

 hairy covering is desirable in itself ; it is advocated as 

 being essential to hardiness of constitution and size of bone. 

 This contention merely means that the desired constitution 

 and sufficient bone have not hitherto been obtained without 

 an abundance of hair." This gentleman cites cases in 

 which, for railway work, clean-legged horses are preferred 

 to those with a plentiful supply of hair, on account of the 

 latter being predisposed to grease and other forms of 

 inflammation of the skin of these parts. We may readily 

 see that legs which have a large amount of coarse hair 

 on them would be predisposed to grease and other alHed 

 ailments ; for, as both hair and scarf skin are secreted by 



