270 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Appin, 1898. 
this horse every characteristic of a true Clydesdale. When he died—though 
willing to give £80 in Brisbane for a horse to take his place—I could not get 
one, and had to put two horses at his work. But the skill and judgment 
required to raise good styles of horses on those lines is scarce, and even in 
skilful hands the misfits must always be much more numerous than the fits. 
The only reasonable and safe plan to improve our horse stock is to 
breed on the lines of ‘like breeds like.” 
Another gelding in the stable—sired by the imported Shire, grandsire of 
the other gelding—was of quite a different type: he had the straightest of 
straight Shire formation. 
As a peripatetic advertisement for business he was invaluable; amateurish 
horse-fanciers raved over him, and talked of him about town as a noble animal. 
As a worker or breadwinner he was a fraud. Though the largest and heaviest 
horse—not in our stable only but in Brisbane—the smallest horse in the stable 
could take heavier loads; his straight form made him quite weak at a lift or 
when pulling up a steep pinch. 
To continue indiscriminately crossing the oblique and straight formations 
can only serve to ‘‘pi the type”? some more, and make improvement more 
difficult or rather hopeless of accomplishment. 
Another decade or two at the present pace in deterioration of our horse 
stock, and the cheapest and quickest method of improvement will be to consign 
our stock of horseflesh as frozen meat to the continental markets, and start 
afresh on better and more intelligent lines on a new stock. 
