SUFFOLKS. 165 



"On Thursday, 9th July, 1724, there will be a drawing at Ixworth Pickarel, for a piece of 

 plate of 45s. value ; and they that will bring five horses or mares may put in for it : and 

 they that draw twenty the best and fairest pulls, with their reins up, and then, they that 

 can carry the greatest weight over the block, with fewest lifts and fewest pulls, shall have 

 the said plate ; by such judges as the masters of the team shall choose. You are to meet 

 at twelve o'clock, and put in your names (or else to be debarred from drawing for it), and 

 subscribe half-a-crown a-piece, to be paid to the second best team." 



Sir Thomas Gery CuUum, in a note to the second edition of his brother Sir John's work, 

 adds : " The trial is made with a wagon loaded with sand, the wheels sunk a little in the 

 ground, with blocks of wood laid before them to increase the difficulty. The first eff'orts 

 are made with the reins fastened as usual to the collars, but the animals cannot, when so 

 confined, put out their full strength ; the reins are therefore afterwards thrown loose on their 

 necks, when they can exert their utmost powers, which they usually do by falling on their 

 knees, and drawing in that attitude. That they may not break their knees by this operation, 

 the area on which they draw is strewn with soft sand." 



In the "Suffolk Agricultural Report," 1794, page 41, allusion is made to these competitive 

 trials of strength : " Amongst the great farmers in the Sandlings south of Woodbridge and 

 Oxford, there was forty years ago a considerable spirit of breeding and drawing team against 

 team for large sums of money. Mr. Mays, of Damsholt Dock, was said to have drawn fifteen 

 horses for 1,500 guineas." 



" An acre of our strong wheat land ploughed by a pair of them in one day," observes 

 Sir John CuUum, " and that not an unusual task, is an achievement that bespeaks their 

 worth, and which is scarcely credited in many other counties." " Though natives of a 

 province varied with only the slightest inequalities of surface, yet," he adds, in his panegyric, 

 " when carried into mountainous regions they seem born for that service. With wonder and 

 gratitude have I seen them, with the most spirited exertions, unsolicited by the whip, and 

 indignant as it were at the obstacles that opposed them, drawing my carriage up the rocky 

 and precipitous roads of Denbigh and Carnarvonshire." 



Suckling, in his work on the "History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk," alludes 

 to the Punches as a docile race, unrivalled at what is proviacially called "a dead pull." In. 

 describing them, he says, " They are middle-sized, very short made, and though low in the 

 fore-hand, are active in their paces, and on the lighter lands of the county will draw a plough 

 at the rate of three miles an hour." 



At one time Suft"olk Punch mares were used to breed from, crossed with thoroughbred 

 sires, with the view of producing hunters and carriage-horses. But the quality and pace 

 required in the present time will not admit of any admixture of carty blood, although the 

 Suffolk, which trots with empty carts from the hay-field, would occasionally afford some 

 happy hits. General Lord Strathnairn mentioned to the Lords' Committee, of which he 

 was a member, that the Earl of Jersey (the fifth), a very famous horseman and rider, hunting 

 from Melton in its most palmy days, found one of his best hunters in the produce of a 

 Suffolk Punch mare and an Arab sire. At present nothing less than a thoroughbred, clear 

 in the pipes, can live in the first flight of Leicestershire. 



The most memorable occasion in modern days of cart-bred horses taking rank with 

 carriage-horses occurred when Her Majesty in solemn procession proceeded to return thanks 

 at St. Paul's for the recovery of the Prince of Wales from an. attack of typhoid fever, in 

 1872. Far some unknown reason the Speaker's carriage was not, according to precedent. 



