580 Report upon the Exhibition of Horses at Kilburn. 
of the original little stocky Suffolk Punch, while retaining his 
colour. Arthur Young, although pronouncing that " an uglier 
horse could not be viewed," described the Punches] with rapture 
more than a century since (as was natural in a Suffolk-bred 
man) ; and it is promised, in the prospectus of the Stud-book 
which is about to appear, that it will contain pedigree charts of 
Suffolk horses genealogically traced for one hundred and twenty 
years. The breed was once in such favour with the amateur 
farmers who constituted the Council of the Royal Agricultural 
Society that a majority of prizes was awarded to it. In those 
days weight was undervalued, but a change in public opinion 
soon supervened, and the importance of bulk was made mani- 
fest when the value of deep ploughing with double shares was 
firmly established, and when it was found that a profusion of 
silky hair on stout legs was an unerring index of constitution. 
One of the original merits claimed for the breed was that 
animals belonging to it were active and able to trot, which 
made them peculiarly useful for certain classes of work ; while, 
on the other hand, it was imputed to them for a fault that they 
were soft, and apt to become lame when forced habitually into 
a trot. Within the last forty years, however, the weight and 
size have undergone a marked improvement, and simultaneously 
the activity has been retained and soundness insured by the 
severe and unsparing comments made in the show-yards by 
local breeders upon the defects of the animals exhibited by 
their rivals. No breed has derived more advantage from 
country shows, as is attested by the following extract from a 
singularly lucid essay printed in the ' Live Stock Journal 
Almanack ' of 1878, from the pen of an eminent authority, 
Mr. Herman Biddell : — 
" Emulation, competition, a laudable pride in producing 
better horses than others possess, stimulated the earlier breeders, 
as it stimulates their successors of the present day. The show- 
yard has done wonders for the breeds of horses all over the 
kingdom, but in no county has the rivalry of the prize-ring been 
taken up with more spirit or with greater success than in Suffolk. 
Long before the institution of the agricultural shows, which have 
since been extended into such gigantic exhibitions, there were 
men in Suffolk who knew what the form of a horse should be ; 
could see faults in their own, and had watched what others were 
doing outside the borders of the county. They had long aimed 
at a type of horse, the number of which has been vastly multi- 
plied, but the form of which has not been greatly exceeded. 
The early histories of the county describe the ' drawing-matches' 
— team against team with sand-loaded waggons — and in suCh 
tests no doubt the low fore end, the upright shoulder, and the 
