RIDGWAY ON THE ARAB HORSE 433 



identifies with the Barb, which " may have found its way to 

 the North African shore at a very early date from the neighbour- 

 ing coasts of Spain, and there, in the special environment of 

 the desert plateaux immediately south of the mountain 

 ranges, have acquired . . . the superficial qualities of thorough 

 breeding, while retaining the convex head, the drooping 

 quarter, and low carriage of the tail which belonged to his 

 European progenitors." The Arabian horse, or Keheilan, the 

 origin of which Ridgway attributes to the Nile Valley, with 

 its extremely unlikely conditions for developing a breed of 

 horses, Blunt claims for the Euphrates Valley, and more 

 remotely in time and distance from Southern Asia. What- 

 ever may have been its origin, Ridgway has established the 

 existence of a Libyan horse of superior quality, highly 

 specialised by its peculiar environment, which he asserts 

 was bay in colour with a white stain on the forehead ; also, 

 that the swiftest horse in Homer's time was of this colour, 

 and that the "dark horses of Libya" were the swiftest in 

 the classical times of Greece as well as " in the Roman circus 

 in the first century of our era." He says further, on the 

 authority of tomb-paintings, that " horses of a bay or brown 

 colour existed in Egypt fifteen hundred years before the 

 Arabs possessed a horse." The drooping tail of " Spiermint," 

 the Derby winner of 1906, and of many of the best modern 

 Thoroughbreds, is, if Blunt be right, additional evidence of 

 their Libyan connection, which Ridgway advances on the plea 

 of colour there being no dun Thoroughbreds and a greatly 

 preponderating and increasing proportion of bay horses among 

 the best horses which have run in the Derby, the Oaks, and 

 the St Leger from 1870 to 1899. Chestnut comes next to 

 bay as a good second, but blacks and browns are not much 

 in evidence, and grey is never now seen to win a good race. 



THE ARAB HORSE 



The Arab or Kohl breed of horses is the Thoroughbred 

 of the East and of Africa, as the English Thoroughbred is that 

 of the West. It has been in times past responsible for the 

 quality that has appeared among horses of mixed blood in 

 Eastern countries. Whatever may have been the original 

 habitat in which this peculiarly beautiful section of the great 

 family of Equidce became developed and specialised, there is 



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