18 THE HORSE 



The real test, however, in a Beduin's eyes, is whether a 

 strain has only one name, for if so it can never be accepted 

 as pure-bred, and stalHons are only used as sires from those 

 strains which possess double names. 



The reputation of the Kehilan and the Seglawi Jedran 

 for speed received singular confirmation in 1884, when 

 Hadramaut, the property of the writer, but bred by Mr. 

 Wilfrid Blunt at Crabbet Park, won the Oriental Stakes, 

 at Sandown Park, beating the winner of a similar race 

 at Newmarket a fortnight previously, while Haifa, an 

 own sister to Hadramaut, ran third. These two were 

 by Kars, a Seglawi Jedran of Ibn Sbeni, who was 

 purchased by Mr. Blunt at Aleppo, from Mahmud Aga, 

 a Kurdish Chief of Irregulars, who obtained him as 

 a two-year-old from the Fedaan Anezeh, and when he 

 was three years old rode him to the war in Armenia, 

 when nearly every other horse perished. The dam of the 

 pair was Hagar, a Kehilet Ajuz, and so the best strains 

 of the desert were commingled, with satisfactory results. 

 Moreover, the horse which divided the brother and sister, 

 and was second, bore such plain indications of having 

 English blood in his veins that when in the paddock at 

 Newmarket, the late Major G. B. Luxford and the late 

 Colonel G. Hutton, two friends of the writer, as well as 

 himself, all having had experience in training and riding 

 Arabians, and the Arabian-English cross, at once exclaimed, 

 when Asil made his appearance, " That's not a pure-bred 

 Arabian, but half-English." Nobody used to the two kinds 

 can easily make a mistake, for there are very essential 

 differences ; and in this case it is not difficult to trace the 

 probable source whence the English blood was derived. 

 Captain Tryon purchased the mare, Belkis, at Aleppo in 

 1881, in foal with Asil to an Abeyan Sherik horse ; but he 

 probably was quite unaware that about twenty years 

 previously the late Mr. John Johnstone, of Heath Hall, 

 Annandale, had carried out a series of experiments at Aleppo 

 crossing Arabian mares with English thoroughbred sires, 

 and also English thoroughbred mares with Arabian stallions, 

 the results of which he published in the Spurting Magazine 



