animals void of external symmetry, coarse in hide and flesh, and their bones, al- 

 though of greater bulk, porous and comparatively deficient in substance and weight. 

 We here approach the native regions of the Cart Horse, and we have just stated the 

 natural characteristic distinctions between him and the Courser. There are doubt- 

 less anomalies or variations in this, as well as in most other cases — ^the high northern 

 latitudes produce small and active animals, whilst the dromedary and the elephant 

 are bred in the arid and barren deserts of the south, soils, it might be supposed, the 

 least adapted to the production and support of animals of such a vast bulk. 



"Either because such is the fact, or for the sake of obtaining a convenient 

 hypothesis, we make Arabia the native or breeding country of the Courser, and 

 that part of Europe formerly denominated the Netherlands, or Low Countries, the 

 aboriginal soil of the large draught horse. Without stopping to enquire whether the 

 two species originally sprang up or grew in these particular countries, a thing which 

 we can never ascertain, we will pass on to facts which we really know — namely, 

 that those two regions are not only peculiarly adapted by nature, soil and climate each 

 to the production of its respective indigenous species of the horse, but that the largest 

 and most beautiful and highly qualified have been, from the earliest periods of 

 which any accounts are extant, procured from thence. From Arabia has issued 

 the prototype of the best-shaped, speediest and most lasting racer, and from Bel- 

 gium the draft horse of the greatest bulk and weight in the world. 



"To advert cursorily to the common hypothesis which we have rejected — that 

 all horses are derived from the same single primitive species, and that varieties are 

 purely accidental, and the effects of varying soil and climate — we must remark that 

 such opinion, whether simply true or false, has given rise to the most absurd con- 

 jectures. For these the otherwise justly celebrated Buffon has distinguished him- 

 self beyond all other writers, and it is difficult to read with grave face his system 

 of species and variety in the canine genus, with his derivations and his metamorphoses 

 of one species into another merely from the change of air and food. This acute 

 naturalist, as well as our British farmers, had overlooked the possibility, or rather 

 almost inevitability, of intercopulations. 



"In truth, allowing full force to the arguments derived from the effect of soil 

 and climate, it is equally true there are certain landmarks and boundaries of spe- 

 cific character in both the animal and vegetable creation which nature will never 

 permit to be passed. No length of time or naturalization upon the marshy soil of 

 Belgium, it may safely be pronounced, would be sufficient to transform the high- 

 bred, silken and bounding Courser of Arabia into the coarse, bluff and fixed horse 

 of the former country, nor would the sojournment of the latter during any number 

 of ages in the south have the effect of endowing him with those peculiar properties 

 of body which distinguish the aboriginal southern horse. Of that which would 

 probably happen in this case we are enabled to judge from the experience of cen- 

 turies. The least practical eye can distinguish in our race horses a separate breed 

 from the common one of the country — to-wit, that of the southern horse — with 

 the facility that a man, although no draper, can discriminate between linsey-woolsey 

 and silk. The interchange above supposed would doubtless have the effect of in- 

 creasing the bulk of the Courser and reducing that of the draft horse, but the natural 

 and unchangeable characteristics of each would remain unassailable by any other 

 medium than that of intercopulation, through which we know, by experience, 

 also, they may be merged and in effect annihilated." 



We quote verbatim Chapter II from the able pen of the late Major Roger D. 

 Upton, as given in his instructive book, "Newmarket and Arabia," published in 

 1873, following which we also submit in part the valuable results of his extensive 

 travel and research in Arabia, concerning the Arabian horse, as given in his val- 



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