152 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



unacquainted with the most elementary principles of 

 horse-breeding, and secondly, that they did not 

 begin to own and breed horses (at all events in the 

 coast districts) till about the fifth or sixth century 

 of our era. The latter fact would lead to the in- 

 ference, on the assumption that Arabs were the 

 originators of the breed to which they have given 

 their name, that there were then no horses of this 

 stamp in Palestine and Syria, which was not the 

 case. 



Moreover, if some Eastern nation, Arab or 

 otherwise, was able to produce high-bred horses 

 from a stock akin to the Mongolian tarpan, there 

 is not the slightest reason why some of the national- 

 ities of Western Europe should not have accom- 

 plished the same feat, which they certainly never 

 did. And if the Arab was not thus evolved, it 

 is clearly entitled to rank as a species apart from 

 the original horses of Western Europe, which, 

 as has been shown above, there is every reason 

 to regard as descended from a tarpan-like stock. 



A somewhat different view is taken by Mr. 

 Wilfred Scawen Blunt,^ the well-known breeder 

 of Arabs, who, after alluding to the fact that 

 these horses have been maintained by the Bedouin 

 for at least 1300 years, that is to say, from the 

 sixth century of our era, goes on to observe that 



^ Article " Horse," EncyclopcBdia of Sport, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 426, 

 1911. 



