87 
success, as they are produced on the Con- 
tinent. 
Her Majesty’s reign has seen the rapid 
growth of demands from every civilised 
country in the world for British horses of 
every breed, eloquent proof of the esteem in 
which our horses are held abroad and of the 
success which has attended our endeavours 
to improve them. 
We have, it must be confessed, ‘“ gone 
back ” in our department of horse-breed- 
ing ; the supersession of coaches and their 
teams of fast and enduring horses by 
railway traffic has brought about neglect 
of this most useful stamp of animal. The 
tens of thousands of coach horses formerly 
required created a large and valuable in- 
dustry, and it is only in the natural order of 
things that when railways made an end of 
the coaching era that horse-breeders should 
have turned their energies into new channels. 
It is only within recent years that breeders 
have recognised how much combined and 
systematic endeavour can do to assist them 
in their task of improving our several breeds; 
and it is worth observing that the most im- 
portant societies for the promotion of horse- 
breeding (apart from the General Stud Book) 
were all founded in the short space of nine 
