CART HORSES. Q17 
which would be natural in such an animal as I have 
imagined, but which was never seen in the shire 
horses. 
But, however this may be, the shire horse is a 
beast of great antiquity, though much improved dur- 
ing the past two centuries. In fact, there are some 
living members of the breed whose pedigrees can be 
traced back for at least one hundred and fifty years, 
and this is more than can be said of any other exist- 
ing cart horse family. One reason for the improve- 
ment is a mechanical discovery as to the muscular 
action of the cart horse. It used to be thought that 
he did his work by perpetually tumbling against his 
collar, as it were, thus bringing his weight to bear, 
and consequently that his fore quarters ought to be as 
heavy as possible; it was no harm if his shoulder 
bone were straight, and as for his hind quarters it 
did not matter much what they were. But this notion 
has been exploded, and it is now perceived that a 
cart horse pulls by muscle rather than by weight, and 
more by the muscles of his hind quarters and legs 
than by those of his fore quarters. The structure of 
a cart horse should therefore bear a general resem- 
blance to that of a racer or trotter, except that his 
legs should be shorter, his shoulder less oblique, and 
his rump not higher than the withers. 
The Saturday Review once made some excellent 
observations on this subject, as follows: “There are 
many points, indeed, which good horses of nearly all 
breeds share in common. For instance, the following 
descriptions, taken at random from different news- 
papers: he is ‘thick, level, and strong’; he ‘stands 
on short, well formed limbs, and, like several good 
