132 LIGHT HORSES : BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



THE HARNESS HO'ALK. 



It must depend upon circumstances whether a person about 

 to set up a horse and carriage, gets the horse first, and then 

 looks out for a suitable carriage, or whether the process of 

 selection be reversed. It occasionally happens that people 

 who are not too well off are able to get either a horse or a 

 vehicle on unquestionably advantageous terms sometimes 

 for nothing. When this is the case, it is unwise to decline 

 the offer ; but in either event the one should suit the other in 

 point of build and size. Nothing looks worse than to see a 

 great camel of a horse drawing a low and light vehicle, and 

 nothing looks more inhuman than to set a small and light 

 horse to draw a great heavy carriage. 



Where, however, any reasonable outlay is of no moment,, 

 the first thing to be done is to decide upon the purpose for 

 which the equipage is required. If you want to go to the 

 station two miles off in ten minutes, you will not, of course,. 

 give a couple of hundred guineas for a high-stepping carriage 

 horse and drive him in a brougham ; nor, if you propose to 

 drive in the park, are you likely to select a buck board waggon, 

 and an American trotter with a 2.30 record. 



For a full sized landau or similar carriage, horses of 16 

 hands, at least, will be required ; but it is a matter of taste 

 whether they shall be of the hunter type that is to say, the 

 result of a thoroughbred horse and a half-bred mare or 

 whether they shall be more nearly related to the Cleveland 

 Bay and Yorkshire Coach Horse. For country work it may 

 perhaps be difficult to beat the hunter-bred horse; he has 

 plenty of pace and power, while as he is not likely to have 

 very high action, his legs will last all the longer. This lack 

 of action, however, tells against the ordinary half-bred horse 

 for park and parade purposes, and those who desire something 

 more showy will be more likely to suit themselves by buying 

 or hiring horses of the Yorkshire Coach Horse stamp. It 

 is, however, impossible to divide harness horses into distinct 



