582 
Tlepwi nn tlir IForfiea l^xhihifed at Wliuhnr. 
those mentioned by Mr. Young. In Nortlinmberland, for in- 
stance, were the Vardys, a type once fondly cherished by the 
Northern farmer, who, for some inexplicable reason, eventually 
discontinued breeding a horse with such an established reputa- 
tion. The Vardys, it is true, lacked the size, and therefore 
necessarily to a certain extent the power, of the Shire horse ; 
but contemporary writers describe them as being compactly- 
built animals on short legs, with deep bodies, powerful quarters, 
and with an utter absence of anything approaching slackness in 
the loins. They were, moreover, clean-legged, or nearly so, and 
I have been given to understand that the mares of this breed 
played no insignificant part in the production of hunting stock, 
for which Northumberland was at one time famed. In' like 
manner, the clean-legged mare, which once on a time was the 
only one used for draught purposes in Ireland, made the repu- 
tation of the sister isle as a home for hunters, and from that 
point of view Ireland has materially suffered through the intro- 
duction of Clydesdale blood. Then, again, in the West of Eng- 
land there was a somewhat similar variety, more or less related, 
no doubt, to the pack-horse, of which further mention will be 
made, which, in its turn, was not unlike the old original Cleve- 
land bay. 
Although, in later times, individual judgment and enterprise 
counted for a great deal, the first systematic attempt to ensure 
the purity of the Shii-e breed dates from the establishment of the 
Shire Horse Society in 1877. The Shire Stud-book has neces- 
sarily been an incentive to bi-eeding, and the Islington Shows, of 
course, tended in the same direction, not to mention the enlarge- 
ment of the Royal prize-sheet, and the many prizes given by Agri- 
cultural Societies. In another direction, too, the above-mentioned 
agencies have been most valuable — I mean in connection with 
soundness. About fifty years ago an authority — I think it was 
Mr. Spooner, the veterinary surgeon — wrote of heavy horses 
in these words : " The cart-horse differs in structure from the 
blood-horse, inasmuch as in the case of the cart-horse the bones 
are actually larger, and there is more bone in proportion to the 
muscular system than in other horses. In the heavier horses 
such is the tendency to form bone, that at five years old many 
of the cartilaginous structures, e.g. the cartilages of the foot, are 
changed into bone. . . . There is scarcely a dray-horse but what 
has some ossification of the cartilages of the foot." Now, though 
ossification is unhappily by no means an unknown infirmity, the 
strict veterinary examination to which Show horses are now sub- 
jected has considerably weeded out unsound animals, from Show- 
yards at all events ; for whereas, when the Shire Horse Society 
