DESCRIPTION, 29 



THE CART HORSE. 



THE following- general description of the CART HORSE, or horse adapted to slow 

 draught, may be deemed perhaps sufficiently correct. A capital Cart Horse should 

 not be more than sixteen hands in height, with a brisk, sparkling eye, a light, 

 well-shaped head, and short prickled ears, full chest and shoulder, but somewhat 

 fore-low, that is to say, having his rump higher than his forehand ; he should 

 have sufficient general length, but be by no means leggy ; large and swelling 

 fillets and flat bones ; he should stand wide all -fours, but widest behind ; bend his 

 knee well, and have a brisk and active walk. 



On one or two points, however, the above description does not exactly accord 

 with the opinion and practice of late years. Our Cart Horses of highest figure 

 and price, are more frequently bred to the height of seventeen hands than 

 sixteen, and they are generally seen with lofty forehands, many of them with the 

 deep and counter, or flat shoulder of the Coach Horse. The Suffolk breeders 

 shewed a decided deference to this opinion, by changing, as it were unanimously, 

 the form of their horses, increasing their height and elevating their forehands. 

 After all, fashion and taste, and filling the eye, that never-failing* grand and para- 

 mount consideration, rather than simple and modest utility, may have had their 

 influence in this, as in all other human concerns ; and not improbably, as much 

 strength and activity and power to remove weight, or draw, may be centered in 

 the compass of sixteen as in that of seventeen hands, or of any greater height. It 

 has been moreover urged, that the oversized horses are neither able to do, nor do 

 they, more work than those of moderate size and true proportion ; for, in growing 

 them up to this vast bulk, you gain only in beef and weight to be carried, but no- 

 thing in the size and substance of the sinews and muscles, the cords, levers, and 

 pullies, which are destined to move their own, as well as any extraneous weight. 

 By this reasoning it would seem, that the out -sized are unable to perform even so 

 much work as the middling ; and another argument against them equally just is, 

 that they must in general, consume a proportionally larger quantity of every 

 necessary. It used also to be urged, that the low shoulder lies most in the line of 

 traction, and thence the weight to be drawn, is acted upon in a level, horizontal 

 direction. But amongst these arguments it must not be concealed, that, according 

 to appearance, the largest sized horses are not an overmatch for the vast weights 

 drawn in the coal waggons, brewers' drays, and overwhelming slop carts of the 

 metropolis. 



The chief breeds of slow -draught horses of the present day are, the large blacks, 



