ORIGIN OF GOOD HORSES 213 



equine specimens, for all the world like broncos. " But 

 the proud, gentle, high-spirited, well-mannered, intelligent, 

 beautiful Arabians, of which we have from youth up 

 heard — which we have come, lo ! these many thousand 

 weary miles to worship?" "Ah, you must go to the 

 desert for those !" You accordingly journey to the edge 

 of the desert, perhaps Biskra way, or perchance over liill 

 and dale of never-ending golden sands to the first oasis 

 out beyond the limits where white men congregate ; but, 

 alas ! it is always a sheik or a caliph farther on, at the 

 next oasis, or the next, who has the perfect animal your 

 eye longs to feast upon. Or else, as ill-luck will have it, 

 he has just started with his pet, his choicest mare, the 

 apple of his eye, on a visit to the second cousin of his 

 grandmother, a hundred leagues away. I have, I believe, 

 just missed the most peerless steed of the Orient some 

 forty times save one. 



The reason is not far to seek. Good horses come solely 

 from selection and breeding. But, you will object, there 

 was no breeding to produce the bronco, of whose wonder- 

 ful qualities 3'ou have heretofore told us. On the con- 

 trary, there was natural selection of the very best. Start- 

 ing with pure blood — i.e., the Moorish horses carried bv the 

 Spaniards to America, and there, fugitive or abandoned, 

 the survival of those fittest to flee from wolves or to search 

 good pasture and water over immense stretches of prairie 

 land, bred the hardiest of stock. Man, with the utmost 

 care and skill, could in a certain sense scarcely have done 

 better by the race in all except beauty. On the other 

 hand, starting from the same stock, let man overwork and 

 underfeed the horse and neglect his breedino:, and in a few 

 generations the noblest race will degenerate. It is just 

 this which has taken place in almost all the countries 

 which ought to possess the very highest grade of horse- 



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