This document stated that only in recent years had any further necessity arisen to encourage breeding apart from private enterprise; the scarcity of horses was due, in their opinion, to the creation of large breeding studs by foreign Governments, who came to us for their stock and caused a drain upon our resources. The Commission reported "there was little doubt that the Queen's Plates had failed to fulfil their purpose;" but perhaps it had been nearer the mark to say that the Royal Plates had _ceased_ to fulfil their original purpose, owing to the multiplication of valuable stakes which reduced the Royal hundred-guinea prizes to third-class rank and rendered them useless as factors in the encouragement of breeding. The Commission recommended the abolition of the Royal Plates and the application of the money thereto devoted to a scheme of Queen's Premiums, under which sound and approved thoroughbred sires should stand in specified districts and under control of a local committee, serve mares at a low fee. The scheme was at once adopted, and has worked well in practice. The year 1896 saw the appointment of the Royal Commission to Inquire into the Horse Breeding Industry in Ireland. Though the enquiry resolved itself into a comparatively narrow issue, a very large amount of evidence, much of it exceedingly interesting and instructive, was recorded. In pursuance of their policy of encouraging the breeding of all live stock in Ireland, it was proposed to send over selected stallions, thoroughbred and roadster, for the use of owners of mares in the horse-breeding districts. There was much diversity of opinion on the propriety of establishing hackney sires in a country so famed for its hunters, and the principal object of the Commission was to take the opinions of experts on the proposed step. While the majority of witnesses were averse from the introduction of the hackney sire, on the ground that the happy-go-lucky methods of the small Irish farmer would lead to intermingling of blood to the ultimate deterioration of the Irish hunter, it was generally acknowledged that the bone and substance of the hackney was eminently desirable in many districts to improve the character of the local stock. Could a workable system of mare registration have been devised to prevent hunter mares being sent to hackney sires in those counties where hunter-breeding is a valuable industry, there can be no doubt that the introduction of such sires would lay the foundation in Ireland of the breed of high class harness-horses in which Britain is so singularly deficient, and which could be produced in Ireland with as much, if not greater, success, as they are produced on the Continent. Her Majesty's reign has seen the rapid growth of demands from every civilised country in the world for British horses of every breed, eloquent proof of the esteem in which our horses are held abroad and of the success which has attended our endeavours to improve them.