This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... mr. pole-gells proposed amalgamation. (" The Live Stock Journal;' April 6th, Issj.j S1r, --You invite discussion on this most important and almost vital subject to shire horse-breeders. As silence is often taken to mean consent, Mr. Pole-Gell and his Clydesdale friends will probably think he had only one opponent in Mr. F. Street. At the general meeting of the English CaTt-horse Society, at the London show, the feeling of the meeting was not taken; had it been, I feel sure Mr. Street would have had a large majority to support him. The more the subject is ventilated, the more suicidal it will be seen would be the policy of the breeders of the shire horse to entertain for a moment such an idea as amalgamation. What have they to gain by it? It is quite plain what the Clydesdale men would get by it. Mr. Pole-Gell plainly says, that until he began to purchase Clydesdales with pedigrees, he had no idea of the extent to which English stallions and mares had been imported into Scotland, that this drain still continues, and that he is confident, without these importations, even the present size and substance of Scotch horses cannot be maintained, much less increased; and he evidently wishes it should continue, at the expense of the English breeder. I suppose he wants these cross-bred animals called Clydesdales, although he takes exception to the word "cross-bred;" for, if cross-bred, he says he is at a loss to know "where the purity of the blood of the Clydesdale is to be found." And this is not to be wondered at. If we compare what the now-called Clydesdale is with the Clydesdale of half-acentury ago, as depicted in Mr. F. Street's "History of the Shire Horse," he is more like a Cleveland bay, a cleanlegged, active harness-horse, useful, no...

First Published in 2005. History books have told us for far too long that farming in Britain was, in the eighteenth century, Tull's drill, Townshend's turnips, and Bakewell's metamorphosis of the cow and sheep; in the nineteenth century, corn laws, Coke's enlightened Norfolk squire-dom, and the collapse of the cereal market; and in both centuries, enclosures. In this volume the author has taken the evidence, sieved and analysed it. The result of the analysis may, or may not, show the animal husbandry at least of these two centuries in a truer light. The present book is a sequel to the author’s History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700.