Many old paintings and mezzotint engravings exist to show us the type of Great or Shire Horse as it was bred at various epochs of our history, more or less remote. Some of these have been deposited at the offices of the Shire Horse Society; and these likenesses, often the work of the first painters and engravers of their day, suffice to show that in massiveness and general character the heavy horses of England were much like those of to-day. We have now many horses whose pedigrees are traced in the first volume of the Shire Horse Stud Book for at least a century and a half; back to a date which was within a lifetime of the last days of armoured knights carried by Great Horses. It is this long line of descent which guarantees the continued transmission of valuable qualities. The paintings and engravings, as also the written accounts of the breeds of draught horses in the United Kingdom up to the middle of this century, depict them as of medium size, and it is only by the blending of the “Shire” with the blood of such stock, that they rival the latter in massiveness. THE SHIRE HORSE SOCIETY. It is impossible to close this slight review of the history of the breed without reference to the very important services which have been rendered by the Shire Horse Society. This Society originated in the work of a few men who desired to make an organised endeavour to improve and promote the breeding of the English cart horse by distributing sound and healthy sires throughout the country. Public attention was first drawn to the matter in the year 1877, when Mr. Frederic Street read his paper on “The Shire Horse” at the Farmers’ Club. The Society was founded in 1878 as the “English Cart Horse Society,” it became in 1884 the “Shire Horse Society”: and under the latter name has continued to confer on tenant farmers the benefits which accrued from the date of its establishment. The work of the Society and the eagerness with which breeders have availed themselves of its labours may be seen from the nineteen volumes of its Stud Book. The first volume is a monument of painstaking research; it contains the pedigrees of upwards of 2,380 stallions, many of which were foaled in the last century. These invaluable records were supplied by members from almost every county in England; and their compilation was a task to which Mr. R. S. Reynolds devoted years. The second volume was published the year after the first, and the Stud Book has since been published annually. The nineteenth volume issued at the beginning of the present year shows the total number of animals registered to be 42,304, viz., 17,101 stallions and 25,203 mares.