1 Juny, 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 57 
When the New Zealand boom times came on in the early sixties, “ Scotch 
Jock” was again to the front. He stocked the New Zealand farmers with the 
best of the Victorian stock, which had been raised from those he had selected 
for Victoria ten years before. 
After “Scotch Jock” joined the majority, a class of dealers stepped into 
his place who had a greater regard and better judgment for £ s. d. than for 
a good horse. They flooded Victoria with imported horses of a low grade, 
many of them Shires and low-grade Clydesdales, which have had a very bad 
effect on the Victorian stock. 
Since the day of De Bohun (the representative of Norman Conquest), when 
he is first introduced to us on the morning of Bannockburn, charging down on 
Robert Bruce in full confidence that his great Norman warhorse (alias 
Percheron, alias Suffolk Punch), of straight formation, would ride down Robert 
Bruce and his Arab pony of oblique formation, the Englishman’s confidence 
in mere bulk in a horse remains much the same until this day, as the pages of 
“Youatt ” disclose. It took Robert Bruce’s rather rough surgical operation 
to get it out of De Bohun’s head. Will nothing less get it out of Englishmen’s 
heads to-day, so that our horse stock in Australia may be improved ? 
Tn a way it is amusing to stand by-and observe the purblindness of 
Englishmen in regard to this matter of formation in their horses. 
Let us take, for example, the English horse-drivers. They admire the style 
and carriage of the horses of oblique formation, and they, supposing it to be a 
matter of training, set about training their horses to show the same style. 
This is really the object of the cruel bearing-reins so common at one time in 
England. It is positive cruelty—as their poor mokes of: straight formation 
have their necks set in the shoulder at much the same set as an old ewe—to 
exact from them a carriage of head and neck similar to that of a horse which 
has his neck set down on an oblique shoulder, and is really distressing to the 
horse of straight formation, and becomes painful when long sustained in this 
position by bearing-reins. 
Some years ago a squatter neighbour commissioned a New South Wales 
judge to select a lot of good mares and a horse. ‘The mares were bought at 
auction as New Zealand ships arrived in Sydney. They were a good lot— 
Clydesdale sorts. The horse was a Shire of very straight formation, with 
neither style, carriage, nor action. I was much amused, when looking at them, 
to find the owner was so purblind as to think the want of style, carriage, and 
action arose through want of training, and that training would overcome the 
evident defects in his stud horse. The training had begun—they were feeding 
the poor brute out of a box set over 5 feet from the ground; this was to 
impart a lofty carriage of head and neck. 
I cite these instances only to show the confusion of ideas that obtains 
amongst Hnglish owners and breeders. They appreciate the style that the 
oblique formation gives, but do not perceive that it is given solely by. the 
formation, and that it is purely a matter of breeding, not of training. 
In the sixties, when Scotch Clydesdale breeders were making such a 
mad rush in increasing the size of the Clydesdale by going to English fairs to 
pick up a good stamp of mares conforming to Clydesdale type, they used to say 
that the Englishmen had good horses, but did not know them; they found they 
could get the good ones xt less money than those which they would not have 
had at any price. English agricultural writers of late have affirmed that the 
best way to improve the Shire horse would be to have nothing but Scotch 
judges in their show rings. The Shire horse has certainly the elements of 
improvement within himself. In this respect he is not like some other draught 
breeds—he is not a native, unimproved breed; bis colours and many other 
Arab characteristics put him on quite a different plane from the Belgian, 
Percheron, or Suffolk Punch. His legs are Arab typed, and have not the same 
defects as those other breeds. That in some long past time he has been 
benefited by the Scotch Arab strain is certain, when we reflect that all the 
North of England was held on feudal tenure by the Scottish kings before the - 
