168 THE HOUSE OF AMEBICA. 



extinction of the pacer, and this craze was so strong in its in- 

 fluence that when a foreign horse was brought in, no difference 

 from what country, if he were of the lighter type he was called 

 an Arabian and so advertised in order to secure the patronage of 

 breeders. Horses brought from the African coast were invaria- 

 bly classed as Arabians, notwithstanding they and their ancestors 

 were in Africa more than a thousand years before there were any 

 horses in Arabia; and the same may be said of Spain. But as this 

 line of inquiry has already been considered in another chapter, 

 I will get back to the immediate topic. 



The process of breeding out the pacer did not commence in 

 real earnest until the middle of the seventeenth century, when 

 the Stuarts regained the sovereignty of Great Britain in the per- 

 son of Charles II. Released from the restraints of Puritan rule, 

 the Restoration brought with it a carnival of immorality and vice, 

 for the court and the courtiers set the fashion and the people fol- 

 lowed. As the breeding interest of the period of which we now 

 speak has already been considered in the chapter on the English 

 Race Horse, I will not further enlarge upon it. The light, or 

 running and hunting, horses of England of that day were not all 

 pacers, but they were all of the same type and the same blood, 

 hence when I speak of the pacers I include their congeners. 

 They were small less than fourteen hands high and not gener- 

 ally handsome and attractive. In general utility they were ahead 

 of the importations, and doubtless many of them could run as 

 fast and as far as the foreign horses, but the foreigners had the 

 advantage in size, especially the Turks and the Neapolitans; be- 

 sides this, they were more uniformly handsome and attractive in 

 their form and carriage. It is also probable that the outcross 

 from the strangers to invigorate the stock was needed and re- 

 sulted in the increase of the size of the progeny. This latter 

 suggestion is inferential and has been sustained by many similar 

 experiences, but without this as a start it would be exceedingly 

 difficult to account for the rapid increase in the height of the 

 English race horse. It is certainly true that the chief aim of the 

 English breeder of that day was to increase the size, without los- 

 ing symmetry and style, and if he found that foreign upon native 

 blood gave him a start in that direction, he was wise in the com- 

 mingling. Another consideration, growing out of the rural econ- 

 omy of the people, doubtless had a very wide influence in the 

 direction of wiping out the pacer, in this period of transition. 



