1 Aprin, 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL, © 269 
stock. The other was locally reputed to be a judge, and a good judge, too. 
- Two horses were in contest for honours—one was a Clydesdale sort, the’other 
a Shire. Neither was of high class. The award was given the Shire. The 
Clydesdale, by far the better animal, was bog-sprained. This would have 
justified the award; but I had good reason to suspect they were both innocent 
of having any knowledge of it. Having no interest in the award, and the racing 
man being an old acquaintance, I asked him what had influenced them in their 
award, as, in my opinion, the discarded one was much the best horse. I was 
surprised when he replied they could not think of giving the blue ribbon toa 
horse with white face and legs, and yet they had just awarded the blue ribbon 
in the blood section to a horse of this description (Drum Major). 
I could not help pointing out the inconsistency of his judgment—that on 
the turf they could not afford to veto white faces and feet, neither could the 
Clydesdale breeders ; that the best families threw those markings; and that 
in the best family of Arabs similar markings were a feature. In fact, the 
white markings of the English racer and the Clydesdale are evidently derived 
from the same Arab source. : ‘ 
Some years ago, in the early eighties, a Darling Downs squatter imported 
a lot of high-class Clydesdales from Scotland—several mares and a horse. 
They were an invaluable lot to any community who could appreciate them. 
They were not appreciated, and, strange to say, the most valuable—those of 
highest merit—were least appreciated by our show-ring judges. One mare of 
most extraordinary merit was never looked at, whilst one which ought never to 
have appeared in the same company got the blue ribbon. They belonged to 
the same owner; still the harm of such absurd judgment was just the same. 
This absurd judgment unfortunately is not confined to the show-ring ; it 
is to be found amongst the owners and managers of the largest studs. The 
manager of a iarge stud was showing me through his horses. ‘They had been 
most successful in getting together such horses as Musket, Nordenfeldt, 
and other turf celebrities; they had also got together a grand lot of Clydes- 
dales, and were successful in rearing some grand colts by Blair Athol (C.S.B.) ; 
but at the time of my visit this grand horse had fallen into second place. The 
reigning glory of the stud was shown me—he was a Shire horse with a long 
Clydesdale pedigree, and manager and directors had a long elaborated list of 
his measurements to show how much he excelled Blair Athol. 
I had to say that, in spite of his pedigree, he was a true Shire, and gave 
my reasons for saying so, which were convincing enough to be unanswerable. 
The manager informed me that he had intended going in for Shire blood; in 
that case he could have easily purchased four Shires equally as good for the 
same money as he had paid for this Clydesdale pedigreed one. Here was 
success achieved by a fluke, and great expenditure of money on the point of 
being reversed through want of practical knowledge on the part of the manage- 
ment. So long as they kept in the old groove, and bred pure, their amateurish 
zeal and wealth combined enabled them to buy the best, and, like breeding 
like, success was assured; but the lack of practical knowledge was such that 
the success attending the first venture, when pure Clydesdales of a high class 
were being mated, was being ruined through a Shire horse with Clydesdale 
pedigree being used. This occurred in New Zealand, North Island—not in 
the South Island, where the Scotch farmers would haye helped the manager 
to a better knowledge of what he was working with. But the same thing is 
working and ruining the horse stock throughout Australia. 
Had the Clydesdale with his oblique formation been the only draught 
horse introduced to raise the weight of our stock, no harm would have acerued ~ 
through his use. : 
With extraordinary skill and careful selection, a good stock of horses 
might have been built up even from the Shire horse. A gelding I owned 
twenty years ago of the best Clydesdale type had little or no Clydesdale blood 
in him—his sire was by an imported Shire out of a mare whose dam or 
granddam was a half-bred Arab. The Arab strain imparted by the sire gave 
