"And the Punches! There's cattle!" said William, the Canterbury coachman, to David Copperfield. "A Suffolk Punch, when he's a good 'un, is worth his weight in gold," he added; which is not a very great exaggeration. Keep an eye upon the fields or an observant glance along the road, and the Suffolk Punch will readily be noted in his native country, at plough, halted by the wayside inn, or dragging with indomitable spirit the heaviest loads that the stupidity of the most stupid of waggoners could put him to. If ever horse deserved the praise contained in the familiar copy-book maxim, that he is "a Noble Animal, the Friend of Man," it is to this breed that it most particularly applies. The Suffolk Punch is a sturdy and a willing brute, and will pull against a dead weight until exhausted. It has been said that the Suffolk Punch existed as a type of horse in early British times, and it has been supposed that his remote ancestors were the horses that drew Boadicea's war-chariots. If it were not that he is invariably a chestnut, it might be supposed that his fame in the county had originated the sign of the "Great White Horse" in Ipswich; but from chestnut the breed never varies. It may be of various shades, from the darkest mahogany to the lightest golden-brown, but never any other hue. It is, of course, not necessary to journey into East Anglia to see the Suffolk Punch. Many of his kind are at work in London, drawing heavy loads, and are to be seen expatriated to Russia, and on Canadian farms, thousand of miles away from their native claylands. The Suffolk dialect is kin to those of Essex and Norfolk, but the "Suffolk whine" is peculiar to the county; it is a rising inflection of the voice towards the end of words and sentences. In Suffolk speech "fowls" become "foals," and "foals," "fools"; and archaic words, heard occasionally in Essex, grow more common as the traveller advances. So also does an odd custom first noticed in the neighbourhood of Colchester--the custom of affixing the place-name to the sign of an inn in ordinary talk. The "Gun" inn at Dedham, for example, is always spoken of as "Dedham Gun," and here, at Bentley, the custom is emphasised by the sign of a roadside inn being inscribed "Bentley Tankard," and not merely "The Tankard." [Illustration: SPRING: SUFFOLK PLOUGHLANDS. _After Constable._]