156 



CHAPTER VII. 



HEAVY DRAUGHT-HORSES. 



The True Cart-horse— Natural Pace a Walk— Weiyht Essential — Size of Value— A Dray-horse the largest Type--The 

 Opposite of the Blood-horse — The Cart-horse a Distinct Breed — Not to be Ridden — To Draw Great Loads at a slow 



pace No Cart-horse will Breed a Blood-horse — No Blood-horse a Carthorse— Present to Runjeel Singh — Dray-horses — 



Astonished the Sikhs — Origin of Cart-horse in Netherlands — Attained Perfection in England — Size and Pluck — The Light 

 Cart-horse the War-horse of Rubens — Modern Cart-horses Divided-^London Dray-horse — The Shire-horse — The Clydes- 

 dale—The Suffolk Punch— The Old Suffolk Punch of tlie Last Century— Mr. John CuUum on— Trials in Pulling 

 Weights — Suffolk Mares Formerly Used to Breed Hunters— Lord Strathnairn's Recollections of Lord Jersey— Points of 

 a Model Plough-horse— The Lincolnshire Black— Now Superseded- Scotch Origin of Clydesdale— The Speaker's 

 Carriage Drawn by Pickford"s Van-horses — Description of a Cart-horse — Age of Cart-horses — Commence at Two, Die at 

 Twenty — New English Cart-horse Stud Book Society. 



The true cart-horse— tlic heavy animal whose natural pace is a walk, wliose power consists in 

 no small degree in his weight, whose temperament should be essentially placid, and who must to 

 be of any value in the condition of life to which nature and art have called him, greatly 

 exceed in stature and weight the most useful class of nag-horses, is found in his grandest 

 form in the London dray-horse. 



The illustration of this chapter is copied from a portrait of one of the finest of the teams of 

 Messrs. Barclay, the great brewers, and represents at one end of the scale what the portrait of 

 the blood-horse, the Drake, at page 91, does at the other. 



The blood-horse and the dray-horse will breed together, and their produce will be fertile, 

 but with the exception of that fact in natural history, their qualities differ as much as those 

 of the horse and the poor man's friend, the much-enduring ass. The cart-horse requires 

 courage, but not the sort of courage which blood bestows ; he requires pluck to move and draw 

 a heavy load, and to pull again and again if required until he stirs the inert mass ; but the 

 courage of the blood-horse would in him be quite out of place. The beauty of the cart-horse 

 depends not only on quality and symmetry, but on a sort of elephantine ponderosity that 

 bespeaks power in every muscle and every limb. 



The true cart-horse is a distinct breed, which soil, climate, and food may decrease or 

 diminish in size, or otherwise vary ; but which no change, no selection, however careful, 

 could convert within historical times into anything but a cart-horse, destined for drawing heavy 

 loads. 



In the same way, the blood-horse uncrossed may be as small as a Sardinian pony barb, 

 or tall as the last roaring monster of the English turf; but no external changes can bring his 

 bones, his muscles, or his blood to the condition of the draught-horse breed. In the East, the 

 birthplace of the blood-horse, the cart breed is unknown. 



When the East India Government wished to make a present to Rimjeet Singh, the old 

 "Lion of Lahore," they sent him a pair of London dray-horses, iS hands high; tliese were 

 perfectly useless in that country, where heavy work is much better done by elephants, but 



