192 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
shire coach horse. An American horseman of national 
reputation, the importer and owner of some excellent 
hackneys, writes to me as follows: “The Norfolk and 
Yorkshire hackneys are a distinct breed of horses; 
with some thoroughbred and other crosses, of course, 
but still a distinct breed. They stamp their charac- 
teristics on their progeny in a very marked and de- 
cided manner, — more marked than any other breed 
of horses that I know of.” And he goes on to describe 
them: “The Norfolk and Yorkshire hackneys are 
from 14 hands to 15.3, or even 16 hands high. The 
average is perhaps 15.14. A good hackney is a horse 
of considerable substance, with plenty of bone, fine 
quality, good length, on short legs, and with riding 
shoulders. He is a fast and good walker, and his 
trot is bold, straight, and true, and fast enough for 
him to go ten to fourteen miles an hour. Many 
Norfolk and Yorkshire hackneys have trotted better 
than a mile in three minutes. The fine weight-carry- 
ing hacks one sees in Rotten Row, and the splendid 
teams that are paraded at the meets of the coaching 
and four-in-hand clubs in Hyde Park, are nearly all 
hackneys.” 
Of late years there have been imported to this 
country many representatives of all these families, 
the Cleveland bay, the Yorkshire coach horse, and the 
hackney, —some of them fine specimens, and some of 
them hardly worth their passage money. In fact, 
many of the animals exhibited at our horse shows, and 
sometimes actually winning prizes, as English car- 
riage horses and coaching stallions, have been coarse, 
clumsy brutes, but a slight distance removed from the 
cart horse, and frequently not even sound. 
