The Black Shire Horse. 157 



the objects of unbounded astonishment and admiration in a land where any liorsc over 15 

 hands is tall, and where the cart breed is unknown. 



Many specimens of fairly good draught-horses may be found in Flanders and Northern 

 Germany, whence we derived the progenitors of our carty breeds ; in France, here and there 

 very fine teams of small muscular cart-horses may be purchased, especially in Paris and the 

 provinces bordering on Belgium. The Pcrcheron, already described, is the most esteemed and 

 useful breed in France. As you travel south you find the ox and the cow doing cart-horse 

 work, until you pass the line, where, for road work the mule is preferred to either ox or horse. 

 But it is in England that the cart-horse, like every other kind of live stock valuable in agri- 

 culture, has attained the greatest average perfection, because the principles of breeding have 

 been more carefully considered by our farmers than in any other country, and also because 

 it is the country where, as compared with the rest of Europe, the roads are good, the farmers 

 are rich, and tiie hereditary landowners, as a matter of pride and duty, without regard to 

 immediate profit, have led the way in this as in every other stock-breeding improvement. 



The first heavy draught-horses of which we have any authentic record were bred in those 

 fertile districts of Northern Europe where agriculture was in an advanced state while our rural 

 condition was little better than barbarous. 



When William III. took possession of the throne left vacant by James II., the Dutchmen 

 who followed in his train, and set to work to drain the fens of our east coast, brought with 

 them the heavy black horses of their country ; and from somewhere about that time the black 

 cart-horse became naturalised in England, and has since reached its highest development in 

 the fen counties. 



A somewhat lighter animal, with a good deal of the cart breed in him, had been in use 

 from the eleventh century, as long as heavy armour was worn ; for nothing less powerful than 

 a Mecklenburg half-bred cart-horse would bear a knight encased in iron and steel. But these 

 huge animals were not expected to move beyond a walk except for about a hundred yards in 

 " a course" at a tournament, or on a battle-field. The knights did not ride these ponderous 

 and picturesque brutes upon journeys, or for pleasure, or hunting. Their squires led the war- 

 horse bearing the armour ; while the knight, without it, mounted a good roadster hack or prancing 

 genet. 



The ideas of the general public on the subject of war-horses have been very much con- 

 fused by the historical pictures of eminent artists, who, if they paid any attention to details 

 of costume, generally drew the horses from some conventional model of decidedh* cart-horse 

 descent. The mane and tail being the most important points in an artistic point of view, 

 modern painters have mounted Eastern princes — from Saladin to the last Shah of Persia — on 

 Flemish destriers ; and Boadicea harangues the Iceni from a Roman car drawn not by her 

 own ragged hill ponies, but by steeds stout enough to be harnessed to Queen Victoria's state 

 coach. 



In modern England draught-horses have attained their present perfection because they are 

 strictly bred to draw heavy weights, and not to carry heavy men. 



According to agricultural writers, at the commencement of the present century there were 

 distinct breeds of draught-horses in at least half a dozen English counties ; at present nearly 

 all such distinctions have been effaced, and until quite recently it was only by exception that 

 the purchaser of a plough or wagon team made any inquiry as to breed or pedigree, unless it 

 was of the chestnut Suffolk breed. 



For all practical purposes the true draught-horses ot England may be divided into the 



