292 HORSES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



monopoly, and indicates, besides, that horsemanship 

 was in its infancy; for whenever people have sufficient 

 knowledge of horses, with all their combinations of 

 faults and excellences, and learn to judge of them as 

 amateurs, one individual of the same breed may be 

 worth ten times as much as another, particularly in a 

 king's stables." We think the learned German is right. 

 Fancy-prices must have been unknown in Egypt when 

 Solomon's factors had the choice of its horses at a price 

 varying from 17, 2s. to 18, 15s., according to the 

 lower or higher valuation of the shekel (2s. 3d. to 2s. 6d.) 

 Having already stated that the present Government of 

 India imports horses from Egypt at the rate of about 

 25 a-head, it is curious to observe that the average 

 price of a horse in the East is apparently as unchanging 

 as many of its other usages. Solomon (B.C. 1015) paid 

 about 18, 15s. the British Government last year was 

 paying 20. As a piece of practical information, we 

 beg our horse-buying readers, an$ especially those in 

 search of hunters, to listen to Sir Francis Head : " A 

 respectable first-rate horse-dealer succeeds in his pro- 

 fession, not so much by his superior knowledge of the 

 animals he buys, as by the quantity and quality of the 

 eloquence he exerts in selling them. Every hunter, 

 therefore, that is purchased from a great man of this 

 description is necessarily composed of first, his in- 

 trinsic value ; and. second, of the anecdotes, smiles, 

 compliments, and praises, which although, when duly 

 mixed up with an evident carelessness about selling 

 him, they captivate the listener to purchase him like a 

 bottle of uncorked ardent spirits, evaporate, or, like a 

 swarm of bees, fly away, almost as soon as the transac- 

 tion is concluded, leaving behind them nothing but the 

 animal's intrinsic value." 



Though the laudations of a modern horse-dealer are 

 always to be taken at a large discount, those of an Arab 

 for his favourite steed are genuine. The passionate 

 admiration of the. Arabians for the beauty, strength, 



