58 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Juny, 1898. 
war of independence. That he has since been neglected and deteriorated, and 
the Arab character lost in a great measure through the ignorant mistaken 
ideas of his owners and breeders, is very evident. With the spread of a better 
knowledge amongst the owners and breeders of the Shire, it is a class of 
horse that would readily improve and become a high-class animal of oblique 
Arab type—not so the Belgian, Percheron, or Suffolk Punch, their legs being 
of quite a different formation. They are “tied in” on canons owing to 
faulty form of bones forming the knee-joint. To overlay with Arab formation 
to alter this, the horse that would remain would be pure Arab. 
It is generally accepted that when overlaying—grading, the Americans 
would say—with any desired type the alteration desired begins at the head, 
and the overlaying works backwards towards the extremities as the overlaying 
or grading is continued. , 
In the human family it is known that those having negro blood may, by 
having only white forbears for several generations, have become fair and 
freckled, with light hair and blue eyes, and yet retain the negro heels and 
knuckles. To get rid of the bad formation of knees, canons, and pasterns of 
those ancient native breeds, such as Belgian, Percheron, and Suffolk, we may 
realise how little of them would remain, from this negro instance. | Practi- 
cally, the whole superstructure has to be removed to reach the foundations. 
Bruce’s exploit with De Bohun has been dwelt upon by historians as a 
daring, foolhardy feat, and displaying great and exceptional courage on the 
part of Bruce. Anyone with an experience of Australian stock-riding will 
realise the absolute safety of Bruce—mounted on an Arab—from De Bohun 
on a horse of the ancient native breed of straight formation with several 
hundredweight up—man and mail sometimes equalled 10 cwt. To extol this 
_ feat as daring or foolhardy in a camp of Australian stockmen could only be as 
a huge joke—wrote sarcastic; but there is one aspect of this exploit which 
historians have failed to grasp: It was the death-knell of Norman Con- 
quest. Their men-at-arms, who had ridden down Harold and his Saxon 
followers at Hastings, and had just before ridden down the Welsh and Irish, 
were in this feat of Bruce’s shown to be powerless, ineffective, and harmless 
to men of nerve mounted on the Arab galloways which then constituted the 
horse stock of Scotland. Bruce, who was a great general, quickly availed 
himself of this Bannockburn experience, so that when Edward II1I., eager 
to avenge Bannockburn, approached the Scottish border with an army of 
100,000 men, such as England had never marshalled before—for the first time 
Wales and Ireland both supplied picked troops—Bruce despatched 20,000 
mounted spearmen,.all confident as to their ability to hold the Norman men-at- 
arms as cheaply as Bruce had at Bannockburn. ‘The feats of this band in face 
of such an army under such a general as Edward III. only required a Xenophon 
to make it read more wonderful than the retreat of the 10,000. ~ 
The power of the Norman .kings and their select following of men-at- 
arms to oppress the people of England was broken for ever, and all this was 
brought about by such a simple thing as a slight variation of the angle of the 
bones of the horses’ shoulders, hips, and pasterns—such a small matter that 
historians have hitherto failed to see it even with their spectacles on. 
