242 A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



stinted to them produced the improved English carriage 

 horse of fifty years ago. 



The next step was the putting of the half- bred fillies, by 

 thoroughbreds out of Cleveland Bay mares, a second time to 

 thoroughbred stallions; their progeny to become the hunt- 

 ers, while themselves and their brothers were lowered into 

 the carriage horses; and the half-bred stallions, which had 

 been the getters of carriage horses, were degraded into the 

 sires of the new, improved cart horse. 



From this, one step more brings us to the ordinary hunter 

 of the present day of provincial hunting countries, for light 

 weights, and persons not willing, or able, to pay the price of 

 thoroughbreds. These are the produce of the third and 

 fourth crosses of thorough blood on the improved mares, de- 

 scended in the third or fourth degree from the Cleveland 

 Bay stock, and are in every way superior, able and beautiful 

 animals, possessing speed and endurance sufficient to live 

 with the best hounds in any country, except the very fast- 

 est, such as the Melton Mowbray, the Northamptonshire, 

 and, perhaps, the Vale of Belvoir, where the fields are so 

 large, the land all in grass, and the scent so fine that fox- 

 hunting in them is in fact steeple-chasing; so that no fox 

 can live before the hounds on a fine scenting day above half 

 an hour, nor any horse, except a thoroughbred, live even 

 that time with the hounds, having fourteen stone or upward 

 on his back. 



No sort of breeding in England is so profitable as this. 

 The breeder is comparatively secure against anything like 

 ultimate loss, while he has a fair chance of drawing a capital 

 prize in the shape of a first-rate hunter or a carriage horse 

 of superior quality; and it is to the breeding of such a class 

 of animals that the attention of the farmers in horse-breed- 

 ing counties is wholly directed at this date. 



For this reason one has no more pure Cleveland Bays, the 

 use of the stallion of that breed being entirely discontinued; 

 large, bony, slow thoroughbreds of good form and great 

 power, which have not succeeded on the turf, having been 

 substituted for them, even for the getting of cart and farm- 

 ing-team horses; and the farmers finding it decidedly to 



