72 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



not one of his different owners has been able to teli us anything 

 about his origin. Number 21 was, possibly, an Arabian, but the 

 Duke of Newcastle, who knew the horse well, seems to have 

 doubted his genuineness on account of Ids inferiority. However 

 this ma*y have been, he preceded other importations so many 

 years that it is not known that he ever sired a colt, and as a pro- 

 genitor we may as well strike him out. Number 22 seems to be 

 in darjkness, and all efforts to find his origin having failed he may 

 as well be classed as unknown. Number 23 is furnished with no 

 evidence that he was entitled to be classed as an Arabian. Num- 

 bers 24 and 25 were confessedly not genuine. 



This reduces the analysis to its lowest form and shows that in 

 the original foundation stock, including Mr. Parley's horse (13), 

 there were ten Turks and six Barbs that can be accepted with 

 reasonable certainty. This leaves eight so-called "Arabians/' 

 from which we must eliminate numbers 17, 21, 24, 25, leaving 

 numbers 18, 19, 22, 23, without any evidence whatever that they 

 were Arabians except in name. From these four rather obscure 

 animals, therefore, according to the Rous dictum, the English 

 race horse must have derived every drop of his blood; and yet 

 there is not a scintilla of evidence either direct or inferential that 

 any one of them, or the ancestors of any one of them, ever saw 

 Arabia. From the custom of calling every horse from abroad 

 an "Arabian," that has prevailed in England for more than two 

 hundred years, it is fair to conclude that there was no Arabian 

 blood in the foundation stock. It was the blood of the Turks 

 and the Barbs, commingled with that of the native blood that had 

 been bred to race for centuries, that furnished the foundation of 

 the modern English and American race horse. 



Blood in the race horse is an imperative necessity, but it must 

 be blood that has been carefully selected from winners, and raced 

 for generations, or it is of no value as an element of speed. If 

 the English race horse had been a strictly pure exotic from 

 Arabia Deserta, as Admiral Rous maintained, he would have 

 been of no value either as a race horse or the progenitor of race 

 horses, without many generations of careful selection and develop- 

 ment of speed. 



The Godolphin Arabian was altogether the greatest horse of 

 his century. He nourished during most of the reign of King 

 George II,, but the horsemen of the world, even Englishmen 

 themselves, know far more about him than they do about the 



