268 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Arrrn, 1898, 
Horse-breeding. 
CROSS-BREEDING. 
By “ARAB.” 
Tux prices realised in London for the horses of the New South Wales troops 
is ample evidence that even our well-bred horses are wanting in marketable 
yalue—public spirit and patriotism had placed the best at the service of Colonel 
Lasseter’s corps—and the result in the London market was a paltry £120 as_ 
the highest price. Had any horse-breeding county of England or Ireland been 
searched with the same patriotic zeal to send out its best stamps, what a 
difference their London market value would have represented. Horses of 
high class of all breeds—Arabs, English-racer, Clydesdale, and Shire—have 
been imported to Australia in numbers sufficient had they been skilfully 
handled, and their good points conserved, as would have made the horse stock 
of Australia second to none in the world. 
That they have been most unskilfully handled by the colonists, the state 
of our stock emphatically proclaims. 
- In blood stock, owners of ‘such horses as Sir Modrid, Darebin, and 
others of like calibre—having stoutness and staying powers—are not patronised 
as they deserve. Darebin might have been a sire of plough horses. Of course, 
in the eyes of modern turfites, this may appear no compliment to Darebin; 
‘still I believe it to be the highest merit that can be credited to a thoroughbred 
horse. 
Of high-class Clydesdales, enough have been imported to Australia to have 
made the draught horse of Australia amongst the best in the world; instead 
of which, though he has been increased in size and numbers, he is not as good 
as he was a quarter of a century ago; and if we take the draught horses to be 
seen in the streets of Brisbane to-day as a fair sample of the draught horses 
of the colony, even a small dra{t of horses fit for home markets would be hard 
to get together. ; 
The large importation of high-class Clydesdales is certainly not respon- 
sible for this, nor need we blame the importation of large numbers of Shires; 
either of those breeds or types skilfully and carefully handled and bred within 
themselves would have given a stock of horses fit for export. The trouble has 
arisen through injudicious indiscriminate crossing of those two breeds, or rather 
formations—the Clydesdale, being of oblique formation, fails to nick well with 
the straight formation of the Shire. 
The large expenditure for high-class sires has practically been thrown 
away owing to the unscientific unskilful way in which they have been crossed, 
The good points of both have been lost, and bad points belonging to neither 
have been developed. 
In our show rings I have seen a draught horse carrying the blue ribbon 
for best horse and also a special prize for good action, which from cross- 
breeding had the forequarters straight and deficient, whilst his hindquarters 
were of the oblique formation. He could neither walk nor trot level, but had 
an ambling shuffling gait, and yet the judges could not see it, and, as colonial 
judgment goes, they were good judges, too. 
The horse judgment displayed in our show-rings where draught is con- 
cerned is a thing to make gods and Scotchmen weep. I remember being 
present ata country show over twenty yearsago. One of the horse judges wasa 
man long and fayourably known in Brisbane as an owner and breeder of racing 
