61 



THE IRISH HORSE. 



In some of the rich grazhig counties, as Meath and Roscomnioii, a larg6 

 lon^ blood horse is reared of considerable value, but he seldom has the 

 elegance of the English horse ; he is larger headed, more leggy, rago'ed- 

 hipped, angular, yet with great power in the quarters, much depth beneath 

 the knee, stout and hardy, full of fire and courage, and the best leaper in 

 the world. 



The Irish horse is generally smaller than the English. He is stinted 

 in his growth, for the poverty and custom of the country have imposed 

 upon him much hard work, at a time when he is unfit for labour of any 

 kind. For this reason, too, the Irish horse is deficient in speed. There 

 is, however, another explanation of this. The Irish thorough-bred horse 

 is not equal to the English. He is comparatively a weedy, leggy, worth- 

 less animal, and very little of him enters into the composition of the hunter 

 or the hackney. 



For leaping the Irish horse is unrivalled. It is not, however, the leap- 

 ing of the English horse, striding as it were over a low fence, and stretched 

 at his full length over a higher one ; it is the proper jump of the deer, 

 beautiful to look at, difficult to sit, and, both in height and extent, unequalleji 

 by the English horse. 



There are very few horses in the agricultural districts of Ireland exclu- 

 sively devoted to draught. The minute division of the farms renders it im- 

 possible for them to be kept. The occupier even of a tolerable sized Irish 

 farm, wants a horse that shall carry him to market, and draw his small 

 car, and perform every kind of drudgery — a horse of all work ; therefore the 

 thorough draught horse, whether Leicestershire or Suffolk, is rarely found. 



If we look to the commerce of Ireland, there are few stage waggons, 

 or drays witli immense cattle belonging to them, but almost every thing is 

 done by one-horse carts. In the North of Ireland, some stout horses are 

 employed in the carriage of linen, but the majority of the garro?is used in 

 agriculture or commercial pursuits are miserable and half-starved animals. 

 In the north it is somewhat better. There is a native breed in Ulster* 

 hardy, and sure-footed, but with little pretension to beauty or speed. 



Chapter V, 



THE ZOOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE HORSE. 



There are so many thousand species of living beings, some so much 

 resembling each other, and some so strangely and altogether different, that 

 it would have been impossible to have arranged them in any order, or to 

 have given any description that could be understood, had not naturalists 

 agreed on certain peculiarities of form which should characterize certain 

 classes, and other lesser peculiarities again subdividing these classes. 



The first division of animals is into vertehrated and inverteb rated. 



Vertebrated animals are those which have a cranium, or bony cavity 

 containing the brain, and a succession of bones called the spine, and the 



