264 A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING, 



Oxfordshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, 

 Nottingham, Northampton, Lincolnshire, and 

 Cambridgeshire; the last two counties named 

 perhaps producing the most thoroughly char- 

 acteristic and representative animals of the 

 breed. 



There has been. a decided tendency among 

 breeders of Shire horses for twenty years past 

 to breed more for quality than size, and conse- 

 quently somewhat of the rugged massiveness 

 which formerly characterized the breed has 

 disappeared, making the typical Shire horse of 

 to-day much more active, alert, and spirited, 

 and with considerable more " finish" and "style" 

 in his appearance than his progenitors of forty 

 years ago. Our illustration is an exact repro- 

 duction by photograph from life of a Shire 

 stallion of considerable note as a recent prize- 

 winner in Great Britain. 



The importation of this great breed of heavy 

 horses to America was not pushed with as much 

 energy nor carried on to anything like so great 

 an extent as the merits of the breed would have 

 justified until within a comparatively recent 

 period. Occasional importations of one or two 

 animals at widely different periods were made, 

 but within the past twelve years they have been 

 imported in considerable numbers. They have 

 grown rapidly in popularity in the great agri- 

 cultural States of the Mississippi Valley, and a 



