38 UNASKED ADVICE. 



quiet also to saddle and groom, unless ill treated. As a 

 race-horse he often knows too much ; but he has many 

 qualities that, disseminated among our saddle-horses, 

 would make the possession of a stable less of a care than 

 it often is. 



THE BARB. 



WHILE on the subject of foreign, and especially Eastern, 

 horses, it would not do to pass the Barb by without 

 notice, the rather as he has had to do quite as much as 

 the Arabian with the foundation of English thoroughbred 

 horses. The horses named in the earliest pages of the 

 " Stud Book" are called Barbs, Turks, and Arabians, the 

 Barbs rather predominating in numbers. It is likely 

 enough that the imported horses, of early days were often 

 wrongly described ; and the north of Africa being, in those 

 days, much more accessible than Arabia, the Barbary 

 horse must have been easier to get than the true Arab 

 a state of things still existing in these days of steam and 

 telegrams. The Barb stands higher than the high-caste 

 Arab ; he has good shoulders, and carries his saddle in a 

 better place than the Arab, but this is usually the result 

 of his middle piece being deficient. He falls away a good 

 deal behind the saddle, and does not carry his " flag" like 

 the Arab. His quarters are sloping to a degree that dis- 

 tinguishes him at the first glance from the Arab, whose 

 tail is set on so remarkably high. The Barb is very fast, 

 and also very quick. He, no doubt, improved the English 

 racehorse once upon a time, but he is little or no good 

 now on English turf, and has especially proved himself 

 incompetent to win the Goodwood Cup. The size of 

 Eastern horses, or rather their want of it, has always 



