LIGHT HOESE. 19 



at even weights (say 14st.) an average little 14.1 Arab 

 would wear out any English thoroughbred horse in cam- 

 paigning, on short allowance of bad forage and in the 

 winter months. And we want a horse that can feed on 

 something different almost every day, and lie out during 

 cold nights without being the worse. I should stipulate 

 that the Arab be entire, so may the other for all I care* 

 But the Arab must be an Arab, and not a Turk or a Barb. 

 Now well-bred Arabs cannot be procured in sufficient 

 numbers to mount our cavalry, but I humbly conceive 

 that the best breed of horses attainable for European 

 warfare would be the produce of the Arab horse and 

 English mare, the latter to be as well bred as possible, 

 but if thoroughbred to possess substance. People will 

 say horses so bred will be too small. But this is a 

 mistake ; they will usually be 15.1 or 15.2, which I think 

 is quite tall enough, the rather as they are likely to have 

 power and constitution. I have seen several half-bred 

 Arabs in England. They have mostly been 15.2, and one 

 I saw of 16 hands. They are always possessed of wiry 

 legs and sound feet, which is more than can be said of 

 the average English thoroughbred. I have seen them 

 with sometimes more, sometimes less, of the Arab 

 character in appearance, but their understandings have 

 always been sound. I remember one mare of 15.1, or a 

 trifle less, who was the Arab all over, and an admirable 

 hunter. " Going on," was more her forte than galloping, 

 though she was not slow, but she could go on for a week 

 at a time, and at eighteen years old had not a windgall 

 on her legs. Of course sire and dam must have good 

 shoulders, as like begets like. Such horses as the mare 

 I have mentioned are the animals wanted for troop horses, 

 not weeds who can gallop, it is true, with almost incre- 



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