41 
ON THE MANAGEMENT OF FARM HORSES. 
of time. So important do I hold it that the cart-horse should be 
fast in the only pace he is required to perform, that! would recom- 
mend to the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society, or rather 
to the stewards of the cattle-yard, that a distance should be 
measured off, to the extent of some fraction of a mile, in the cattle- 
yard, so as to afford an easy method of judging of the pace of cart- 
stallions in their walk; for I hold it as a point of the utmost 
importance that a prize should never be awarded to a bad or slow 
walker, however great his strength or perfect his symmetry may 
otherwise be. 
With these preliminary observations I proceed to consider the 
various breeds of cart-horses. 
The cart-horse is not an aboriginal breed in this country, but 
was imported from the neighbouring continent since the Norman 
Conquest. Indeed, we have reason to believe that the horses 
employed in the army of William the Conqueror were little better, 
as respects breeding, than the cart-horse of the present day. As 
long as armour was in fashion a large massive animal was required 
to support the enormous weight of the steel-clad knight, and to 
withstand the ponderous attack of a similar opponent. The half- 
bred horse was then unknown, and the Barb and the Spanish 
horse were insufficient in size, so that recourse was had to the 
large black horse which had been known throughout the fertile 
plains of Europe from time immemorial, and from which, no doubt, 
the greater portion of our cart-horses are descended ; for we find 
that during the reign of the Edwards, repeated importations of 
these animals took place, and in the time of the Duke of New- 
castle, who wrote a work on horses in 1667, there was in this 
country an established breed of cart-horses. 
The most prevailing colour amongst these animals is black, so 
much so, that we recognise a distinct breed under the appellation 
of the old black cart-horse. We scarcely ever find that the tho- 
rough-bred horse is of a black colour, whilst it prevails very much 
amongst the coarser kind of horses. The black cart-horse is pretty 
generally distributed throughout England, and may, indeed, be 
divided into three kinds : — First, the large massive animal reared 
in the rich marshes and plains of the Midland Counties expressly 
for the London brewers; secondly, the smaller sized, but still 
tolerably heavy, kind of horse generally employed for agricultural 
purposes (a strong compact animal, but slow in its action) ; and, 
thirdly, a lighter and more active animal, possessing, in fact, either 
some admixture of blood of a lighter breed, or being the descend- 
ants of the Flanders coach-horses discarded from the carriage to 
make room for the Cleveland, and welcomed in their more le- 
gitimate sphere at the plough-tail. 
The dray-horse can only be reared in the richest pastures, and 
VOL. XXIII. G 
