GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 7 



and purest Arabian horse, is a detriment and hindrance rather 

 than a benefit to the modern race horse. Mr. Richards, with all 

 his practical knowledge and experience, was no more successful 

 than the amateur, Mr. Blunt. The blood which Mr. Richards 

 brought home was, no doubt, purer and more fashionable, as esti- 

 mated in the desert, than that brought home by Mr. Blunt, but 

 when tested by modern advancement it was no better. 



A careful study of the chapter on the English Race Horse will 

 present to the minds of all my intelligent readers the considera- 

 tion of several points to which they will be slow in yielding 

 assent. These points run up squarely against the preconceived 

 opinions and prejudices of two centuries, and these preconceived 

 opinions and prejudices are well-nigh universal. The first point 

 upon which the public intelligence has gone wrong is in the 

 general belief that horse-racing had its origin in the seven- 

 teenth century, when Charles II. was restored to his throne. 

 The truth is we have accounts of racing by contemporaneous his- 

 torians in the twelfth century, and indeed, we might say from the 

 time of the Romans in Britain. To go back four centuries, how- 

 ever, is far enough to answer our present purpose. After select- 

 ing, breeding, and racing four hundred years we must conclude 

 that the English had some pretty good race horses. This is 

 fully verified by the writers at the close of Queen Elizabeth's 

 reign as well as at the beginning of Charles II. 's. They had native 

 English horses that were able to beat all the imported exotics, in- 

 cluding the Arabian owned by King James. We must, therefore, 

 conclude that the race horse was not created by Charles II., but 

 that racing was simply revived by him, after the restrictions of 

 Cromwell's time, and that the old English blood was the basis of 

 that revival. The importations of so many exotics in his reign 

 were simply so many reinforcements of the old English racing 

 blood. 



The next point to which exception will be taken is the con- 

 clusion reached as to the character and influence of the exotics 

 that were introduced in the reign of Charles II. These exotics 

 have been designated in a general way, by the phrase "foundation 

 stock," which has been introduced more out of deference to 

 the popular understanding than to its legitimate and true 

 meaning. For the real "foundation stock" we must look away 

 back in the centuries, long before Charles was born. The 

 analysis of the data furnished by Mr. Weatherby as "foun- 



