272 A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



It has been remarked that the Clydesdale has been im- 

 proved as regards size and strength during the past thirty 

 or forty years, or since the period when Young Clydesdale's 

 type was fashionable. A good deal of this is due to the ad- 

 mixture of blood from the south, which has, however, been 

 done at the risk of losing ancient important characteristics 

 of activity and quality. Those breeders who have worked in 

 this direction have generally, however, kept the Clydesdale 

 type in view, and no doubt many of the animals brought 

 back were crosses from the Scotch horses or mares which the 

 south-country buyers purchased from time to time at the 

 Scottish fairs, but the pedigrees of which unfortunately 

 could not be traced. The breed, therefore, has not been so 

 much improved as some writers would try to make out, and 

 at Kilburn Show the merest tyro in horses could distinguish 

 in their classes the Clydesdales from the more ponderous but 

 less active draft horses of the English shires. 



It is well known that the Clydesdale owes its quality and 

 other good characteristics to the pasture; sluggishness and 

 coarse, greasy legs being the characteristics of animals 

 reared on low-lying lands with moist pastures; while on dry 

 hill or mixed sandy lands, the grass of which contains plenty 

 of lime, active animals, with sound, clean legs and healthy, 

 durable hoofs, are bred and grazed to advantage. * * * 

 Indeed, to the rich sand-mixed lands of Kintyre, the healthy 

 herbage which covers the thin soils of the Galloways, and 

 the nourishing blades of grass which cover the lime-contain- 

 ing hills of Lanarkshire, the Clydesdale of the present day 

 greatly owes his activity and quality characteristics which 

 have always rendered him superior in the eyes of the for- 

 eigner when viewed alongside his more massive market com- 

 petitor in the south, reared on the "wershy" herbage of the 

 fens. 



Modern Clydesdales are of all colors, bays, 

 browns, and blacks predominating, although 

 there are some greys and chestnuts, while white 

 markings on face, feet, and legs are quite com- 



