CHOICE OF A HORSE. 25 



well-bred mares, make excellent hacks and are hardy. 

 Austria, Hungary, and Poland all furnish their quota of 

 horses bred on similar lines, and Italy, if not already in the 

 field, will soon be catering for our wants. Of late years she 

 has been our largest and best customer for thoroughbred 

 and hackney sires, buying only the best, regardless of cost. 

 In securing choice specimens of the azeel Arab the Italian 

 agents have been peculiarly fortunate. One of the most 

 beautiful ponies I ever had was a Sardinian, evidently full 

 of Arab blood. In the vicinity of Pisa, at Babericina, the 

 Newmarket of Italy, and at San Rossore, on the Arno, the 

 beautiful pine-clad estate of the king, which skirts the Medi- 

 terranean for sixteen miles^, and rejoices in a dry sandy soil, 

 and mild, healthy, and constant climate, are three large 

 studs with two thousand five hundred horses. In them is to 

 be found the English thoroughbred and the Arab in great 

 perfection ; the beautiful well-knit Melton, the winner of the 

 Derby, a prize-fighter from head to heel, and the purest 

 Anezeh being found side by side. 



In Poland, mainly in the Government of Wolthymia, the 

 Count Branitzky, and Counts Joseph and August Potocki, 

 and others of the nobility have inherited from their ancestors 

 studs of pure Arabs in which the true types and strains of 

 blood have been carefully and jealously maintained. These 

 horses have earned for themselves a very high reputation ; a 

 pair, owned by the late Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador 

 at Paris, enjoying the reputation of being the handsomest in 

 the Bois. The climate and generous keep, added to the 

 careful system of selection practised by these intelligent 

 breeders, and by those to whom they succeeded, have added 

 considerably to the bulk and height of these Arabians. 

 Price alone stands in the way of their free introduction to 

 our stables, for they are as clever under the saddle as in 



