THE SADDLE BREEDS OF HORSES 109 



and a consequent broader usefulness, or as marking some 

 special achievement in the breeding art, we may justly 

 assign to one breed more importance than to others. 

 The importance of the Thoroughbred is attested by the 

 following facts : It was the first breed improved and the 

 one on which the principles of breeding have been most 

 systematically practiced ; barring the Oriental, from 

 which the Thoroughbred is derived, his is the purest 

 lineage possessed by any breed, and for it the first stud- 

 book for the recording of pedigrees was established; 

 Thoroughbred blood has been most freely drawn upon 

 in the improvement of other breeds and types in fact, 

 there is scarcely a harness or saddle horse that does not 

 owe its merit indirectly to the Thoroughbred crosses in 

 its ancestry; the Thoroughbred has been a most impor- 

 tant means of indulging a love of sport on the turf and 

 in the field for three centuries. 



125. History in Great Britain. A knowledge of the early 

 horse history of Great Britain is necessary for a complete 

 understanding of the origin of the Thoroughbred. It is 

 interesting to note first, that there are no indications of 

 any horses having been indigenous to Britain, although 

 the most recent researches reported by Ridgeway indi- 

 cate that horses of the north African type were in 

 Ireland as early as the sixth century. The horses with 

 which Britain was first stocked are generally held to 

 have been derived from the pony types native to northern 

 Europe, and consequently were small in stature. We 

 know that the first efforts at improvement were in the 

 way of increasing the size. The Norsemen were the first 

 to introduce the war horse, and the blood of Normandy 

 and Flanders was thereafter drawn on in an attempt to 

 produce horses of a sufficient size and strength to carry 



