40 HORSE-BREEDING FOR FARMERS CHAP. 
temperament, provided always that the breeding of 
sire and dam is similar. Where the breeding of one 
parent is purer than the other, the purest-bred parent 
is the more impressive. But these are generalities at 
best, and are also questions of dispute amongst the 
highest authorities. The safest rule to follow is to 
mate the mare with a sound sire whose character for 
getting good stock is established and which is calcu- 
lated to remedy defects in the mare. 
The fashion for Clydesdales and Shires has 
exterminated the old north-country prejudice against 
hairy heels, and the old clean-legged Northumber- 
land and Yorkshire cart horse is no longer to be 
found : he has been replaced by hairy-legged horses 
approaching one or other of these types. This 
seems to point to some advantage in the new fashion 
over the old, but whilst I admire Clydesdales and 
Shires, I confess never to have understood why value 
attaches to the quantity of hair a horse may have 
on his leg. I feel inclined to consider it merely a 
question of taste, a cultivated and rather unnatural 
development of the hirsute appendages of the cart 
horse. The hair on the leg, to the extent it is seen 
on prize animals in the show- yard, cannot be an 
advantage to a farm horse or draught horse ; it adds © 
to the labour of keeping a horse clean and smart, 
and must be an impediment to him on a wet or 
clayey farm. A well-feathered Shire must lift many 
pounds of balled and matted clay on each leg when 
in the plough, or when carting in miry lanes, and at 
least it cannot add to its ease, quickness, or neatness 
in work. Whilst I am not prepared to admit the 
utility of a large amount of hair on the leg, I strongly 
