HERITAGE OF ARABIAN 217 



load over good roads at a walk, and keep on doing it day 

 in day out for years, fat and hearty, No horse that was 

 ever foaled could run or trot, at the top of his speed (say 

 a 1.42 or a 2.15 gait), three one-mile dashes every day for 

 a season without breaking down. In other words, at 

 speed a horse cannot do one-tenth of the distance he can 

 at a slow gait. It is only the occasional coarse-bred horse 

 who has speed ; and when one has it, still he cannot stay 

 at speed. But this is just what the old desert blood ena- 

 bles a horse to do ; and it is this wonderful quality which, 

 through the English thorough -bred, we have got at home 

 in our runners and trotters and saddle-beasts, and by a 

 principle of natural selection in the bronco. And this same 

 quality we Occidentals, by more intelligent and careful 

 breeding and training and racing than the horse has ever 

 undergone elsewhere, may fairly claim to have improved. 



