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putable in former da5's, previously to the English improvement of the' 

 southern Horse, but it has been out of date full two hundred years, and 

 is at present nonsense. No Arab or Barb, comparatively, has either 

 speed or continuance, a circumstance now so well known upon the 

 turf, that they are never deemed worth a trial, excepting, perhaps, for 

 a hack match, but are invariably applied to common purposes, or those 

 of the breeding stud. Some thirty or Ibrty years past, a plate was given 

 at Newmarket, to be run for by Arabians, but I believe soon discon- 

 tinued. The best of all of them was their speed, and that was suffi- 

 ciently moderate. They usually, I understand, made a burst, and then 

 stopped short. In fact, the form of going in most of the native southern 

 Horses that 1 have seen, is rather a scampering activity, than that reach- 

 ing and energetic speed, which covers and rids of so much ground ; 

 there may be, perhaps, some exceptions, with respect to Barbs in par- 

 ticular, which are occasionally striders, but then they are slow. 



The total inability to race, in the highest bred southern Horses, and 

 that the same faculty should be conlmed, exclusively, to the descendants 

 immediate or remote, indifferently, of that breed, surely form a curious 

 physical question ; 1 shall not attempt to solve the difficulty, only to 

 slate the iacts. It has proved, I believed, that in the races at Calcutta, 

 the imported English Horses were invariably superior, and doubtless 

 such would be the case in Arabia itself Many of the southern Horses - 

 have naturally lofty action, as if they had been managed, a form the 

 most opposite possible to that of the racer. Are we to determine that 

 superior size and strength derived from the rich soil of this country, 

 impart that superiority of speed and continuance to the descendants of 

 the southern Horses ? We know this to be true, in part, by the greater 

 value of the old blood ; yet we have had galloways, bred from native 

 Arabians, or Barbs, both sire and dam, which have proved racers. 



This phenomenon, the improvement of the speed and continuance of 

 the native courser of the southern deserts, has not taken place upon the 

 continent of Europe, although he was first imported thither ; merely, I 

 suppose, for want of a motive thereto. Such being the case, the southern 

 breed has not been kept apart upon the continent, as with us, excepting, 

 for a fiew years, whilst racing prevailed in France, and where the imme- 

 diate 



