XLVIII 



HORSES must be averaged. It will not do to select the 

 exceptional horse for description lest the reader fall into 

 the assumption that all other horses resemble him, or, at 

 least, that the majority do so. This is, indeed, not entirely 

 an error. In the Orient all horses have some of the marks 

 of Arabian blood. There is a singular beauty to some of 

 the points of the Arabian which, even in the commonest 

 stock, never gets quite lost. You rarely see a horse with- 

 out one or more of these, and an odd specimen will now 

 and then crop out among the lowly bred country horses 

 which has all the points of some noble ancestor. Heredity 

 is an obstreperous thing to deal with. In families which, 

 ever so far back, have had some trace of negro blood, 

 perhaps quite forgotten, it is 'said that a Guinea-black 

 baby will occasionally turn up, to the great distress of all 

 concerned and the suspicion of many. 



Among the Arabs, barring the desert tribes, it is, as 

 elsewhere, the rule that only swells have fine beasts. So 

 it is with us ; and after seeing many horses in many lands, 

 I must give it as my opinion that the " Kentucky farmer " 

 rides, on the average, a far finer, better trained, and abler 

 horse than the Arab sheik. Moreover, there are as I 

 have before observed more splendid specimens of horse- 

 flesh on the breeding-farms of America than there are in 

 any Oriental studs, quite apart from the greater size of 

 our thorough-bred. 



By-the-way, this same Kentucky farmer is an odd type 



