THE HORSE. 2 j 



Hugh Capet, king of France, in the ninth century, proposing D himself by intei- 

 tvarriage with Etheldista, to infuse more vivacity into the breed of these semi-barba 

 rous islanders, sent over to her brother Prince Athelstan, a supply of German " running 

 horses," as they were called, this being the first mention of the race-horse in English 

 annals. It is to be supposed that in all cases of male horses thus spoken of, " entire" 

 horses are to be understood ; for then it was not common, as it is now, to violate 

 wantonly the Mosaic Law, which says, " a beast that is crushed, bruised, evulsed, 01 

 excised, (these being the four modes of castration,) you shall not bring unto Jehovah, 

 nor shall you make it so in your land" A practice as doubtful, as to its necessity or 

 utility in respect to the horse, as it is inhuman wherever it is useless. In the case of 

 edible animals, where emasculation promotes size and fatness, and improves the 

 flavour for the table, as with the hog and the sheep, this execrable mutilation is neces- 

 sary, and therefore more excusable ; but this is not the case with the horse. In France 

 where he is remarkable for strength in proportion to size, the post and the farm horse 

 is rarely, if ever, castrated ; and when horses for the road undergo this operation, it is 

 done in a manner and with such reservations as not to destroy the external appearance 

 of this sexual development ; the suppression of which is there considered a striking 

 disfigurement. Descending next to the epoch of William the Conqueror, whose 

 charger was of the Spanish breed, and whose cavalry won for him the victory at the 

 Battle of Hastings one of his subjects, Roger de Belseme, justly obtained popularity 

 as a national benefactor, by the importation of Spanish stallions into England. So 

 decidedly beneficial was the result of this munificent act of an individual subject, that 

 it may well be noted as an era in its way, for it is not to be doubted that these Spanish 

 stallions partook largely of the blood of the Barb, brought into Spain by the Moors, 

 as the Norman-French horse in Canada does, of the same blood, carried from Spain 

 and Palestine to Normandy. To show how largely this new infusion of foreign blood 

 must have refined and thinned the wind, so to say, of the English strain of horses, at 

 that juncture, it is sufficient that we exhibit a well-drawn portrait, ready to our hand, 

 of the Barbary horse, more nearly allied than any other to the Arabian, and quite his 

 equal at least in form, if not in spirit of the same stock, in fact, as Godolphin, com- 

 monly called the " Godolphin Arabian." 



" The fore hand of the Barb is generally long and slender, and his mane long and 

 rather scanty. His ears are small, beautifully shaped, and placed in such a manner 

 as to give him great expression ; his shoulders are light, flat, and sloping backwards, 

 withers fine and standing high ; loins short and straight; flanks and ribs round and 

 full, without giving him too large a belly ; his haunches strong and elastic ; the croup 

 is sometimes long to a fault, the tail is placed high, thighs well turned and rounded, 

 legs clean and beautifully formed, and the hair thin, soft, and silky ; the tendons are 

 detached from the bone, but the pasterns are often too long and bending ; the feet 

 rather small, but in general sound." 



In this delineation of the barb, what reader will fail to recognise most of the genu- 

 ine and well-established characteristics of the high form and breeding so much prized 

 by all good judges ? 



The English Stock, to which a little too much heaviness had already been given 

 oy the dash of German blood, was now approaching that stage which demanded but 

 one more dip of the long-winded, light-footed, silken-coated Eastern courser, such as 

 it received some centuries after with such palpable and finishing effect, from the 

 Darley Arabian; and again from Godolphin, endowing it with both speed an 

 stoutness in a measure, to which no addition has been made by any subsequent sprin 

 kle of exotic blood. When we reach in the progress of these remarks the point whert 

 it will be proper to speak more particularly of this effective agency of these two celo- 

 orated stallions in elevating the character of the English blood horse, we shall give 

 some reasons, drawn from the true principles of breeding, and which we do not recol- 

 lect to have seen anywhere asserted, why it was that they contributed so much to 

 '.hat end, and how it is that similar results have not attended later experiments of the 

 same kind. In the meantime it is necessary to linger on the way in our review, that 

 the chain may not be broken which connects the series of particular importations and 

 other important incidents to which we are indebted for the advantages and delights 

 that <?mnqr from the possession of the existing stock of sure-footed, long-winder 



