J\^otes on Cart Horses. 
311 
attended with considerable benefit. This sire, a big-boned, active, 
and powerful horse, left his mark in my neighbourhood, as 
did another but lighter Clydesdale I well remember, which 
travelled in this county some forty years ago. 
Hair and Bone. 
Formerly the opinion was entertained that sluggishness and 
inactivity are inseparably combined with massiveness of bone 
and carcass ; and further, that an abundance of coarse hair is 
necessary to big bones and massive frames. The modern 
breeders of Shire horses have aimed, not only at better action, 
but at maintaining the size of bone and body, and at the same 
time obtaining a more silky description of hair. A grave doubt, 
however, arises w hether the profusion of hair and " feather" 
insisted upon in Showyards and among the leading breeders of 
Shire horses are really so essential to strength and constitution 
as is generally asserted and believed. As a farmer of heavy clay- 
land — much of it hilly — which requires very powerful horses in 
tillage and in carting, I have long entertained doubt as to the 
policy of the present tendency to such a profusion of hair. 
Breeders not only contend for hair on the rear of the leg, but 
many have also come to insist upon a mass of hair in front, 
from the knee downward — doubtless a characteristic of many 
of the old Shire horses bred in Derbyshire early in the present 
century. Of course no one contends that all this hairy covering 
is desirable in itself; it is advocated as being essential to 
hardiness of constitution and size of bone. This contention 
merely means that the desired constitution and sufficient bone 
have not hitherto been obtained without an abundance of hair. 
It is with some diffidence that I have ventured to take a view 
differing from that held by so many eminent breeders ; but I am 
emboldened to do so by the knowledge that a large number of 
very practical, shrewd men whom I have consulted upon the 
point entertain a similar opinion, indeed hold it very strongly. 
I must say that the modern predilection and arguments in favour 
of profuse hair are not justified by my own experience, for some 
of the most powerful and biggest-boned horses — with the hardiest 
constitutions — I have had during the past thirty years have 
been free from an excessive quantity of hair. 
Shunting railway trucks probably tests the strength and joints 
of horses as severely as any work to which they can be put. 
Before this operation was performed at the Works of my 
Firm by a locomotive, horses were employed ; the strongest and 
most lasting horse we ever possessed for this purpose was a 
deep'^bodied, flat-sided, slow-moving gelding with quite clean 
