THE BREEDS OF HORSES. 259 



deterioration in strength, becomes a defect for the purposes 

 of town work. 



For the business of commercial centers like Liverpool, for 

 instance, where the team work is subordinate to the dock, 

 warehouse and railway regulations, rapidity of movement is 

 found to be a very secondary desideratum to the possession 

 of individual strength. Under these conditions a team (two) 

 of dray horses must be fully capable of working a net load of 

 five tons, the task of shafting which it is obvious no lightly- 

 built animal can accomplish satisfactorily. 



A written description of a high-class Shire stallion of sixty 

 years ago may, for the purpose of comparison, possess (?on- 

 siderable interest to breeders of the present time. Such a 

 sketch can, of course, but very imperfectly convey to the 

 reader's mind an idea of the conformation of one of these old 

 sires, but it may possibly afford a framework whereon his 

 imagination can build those features which a literary repre- 

 sentation fails to make clear. 



With very few exceptions (and those exceptions chestnut), 

 black, dark brown, and grey are the only colors met with in 

 the descriptions of draft stallions living in the first quarter 

 of the present century. To account for this limitation two 

 reasons may be advanced: first, fashion in color may have 

 been considered a very important element in the selection of 

 a sire; second, the light browns, bays, chestnuts, and roans 

 of the present day are probably due to extensive infusions of 

 light-horse blood. 



Whichever of the two reasons is accepted as the correct 

 one, inquiry among old horsemen leaves no room for doubt 

 that black, brown, and grey were by far the most common 

 colors of draft horses. It is further ascertained that black 

 predominated over the two other colors, so much so that the 

 eastern counties horse was known and described as the 

 "Black Lincolnshire horse 1 '; also that the highly-esteemed 

 brood mares of Derbyshire were chiefly of that color. The 

 color of the black horse was not remarkable for intensity, 

 but partook more of a very dark slaty hue, some few speci- 

 mens of which are now occasionally seen in Lincolnshire* In 

 the majority of cases these black horses were marked to a 



