Report on the Horses 'Exhibited at Windsor. 
589 
Of such a type seems to have been the aboriginal Clydesdale ; 
but his present majestic proportions are due to judicious 
crossing. 
One undoubted stimulus towards the improvement of the 
Clydesdale may be traced to the fact that Scotchmen were 
better agriculturists than were the Southerners, and, in the 
use of the iron plough, were in advance of the English. Any 
one who has ever seen a picture of the old twelve-oxen plough, 
with which the English soil was turned in the eighteenth 
century, will readily understand what advantages the Scotch 
implement had over the former. It is, nevertheless, a curious 
fact that Mr. Barclay, of Ury, who succeeded to the family 
estates in 1760, gained his agricultural experience in Nor- 
folk, and is said to have imported a Norfolk ploughman to 
teach the natives how to plough, while employing, as Mr. 
Robertson says, " only the people of the country that were bred 
on his own lands or in the vicinity ; his discipline was very 
severe, but it was very correct." His one desire, on settling- 
down, was to have his land cultivated in fii'st-rate style ; and 
the story runs that, on finding one of his ploughmen declining 
to follow out his directions, he addressed him thus — Mr. Barclay 
had previously joined the Society of Friends — " Friend, thou 
knowest that I feed and pay thee to do my work in a proper 
manner ; but thou art wise in thine own eyes, and regardest not 
the admonitions of thy employer. I have hitherto spoken to 
thee in a style thou understandest not ; for verily thou art 
of a perverse spirit. I wish to correct thy errors for my own 
sake and for thine, and therefore thus tell thee," and the irate 
squire felled the son of the soil with a blow which would have 
staggered an ox. " Though," says the story-teller, " the weapon 
was carnal, this was the demonstration of power, and had the 
desired effect ; the ploughman became tractable and quiet as a 
lamb." It was probably after this episode that Mr. Barclay — 
who came of an athletic family, and was an ancestor of the 
Captain Barclay who walked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours — 
sought the assistance of the Norfolk ploughman. At any rate, 
it was obvious that good horses were necessary in order that a 
plough should show to the best advantage ; the need for quick- 
walking cattle may have acted as an inducement to set about 
reforming the Clydesdale, which designation, by the way, is a 
modern one. 
All authorities are agreed that the increase in size in the 
Clydesdale is due to a cross with Flanders horses ; and, in his 
valuable compilation the retrospective volume of the Clydesdale 
Stud-book, the Earl of Dunmore, to whom the thanks of 
VOL. XXV. — s. S. Q Q 
