30 The Book of the Horse. 



on the road, in the field, and over the steeplechase course ; driven, bought, and sold them ; who 

 was as much at home in the horse world of Spain and France as of England — the late Mr. Thomas 

 Rice, who, being educated as a veterinary surgeon, managed the late Lord Balling's stud when 

 he was our ambassador in Spain. These are his answers to a series of searching questions : — 



" Do I like Arabs .' No. In my opinion they have not one point to recommend them for 

 use in England in which they are not excelled by our own thorough-breds. They are, with very 

 rare exceptions, very bad hacks; they cannot walk without stumbling — in fact, they are always 

 stumbling ; they have no true action in either trot or canter ; they are slow in their gallop, as 

 compared with any well-bred English blood-horse. They are too small for hunting or for first- 

 class harness, and cannot race with common English platers. All I ever saw were so formed, 

 with the croup higher than the withers, that they rode doivn-liill. 



" When I was living in Spain, the Emperor of the French, for whom I had procured some 

 high-class Spanish parade-horses, presented me with two Arabs of the highest caste— purchased 

 without limit as to price, in the neighbourhood of Damascus— a black and a grey. They were 

 as handsome at first sight as any picture of Arabs that I ever saw; about 14 hands 3 inches 

 high, very temperate to ride, with great power in their hind-quarters, but wanting that slope in 

 the shoulders, and that proportionate length, breadth, and power in motion, which are essential 

 to make first-class riding action. 



" I had at that time English thorough-breds and half-breds, Spanish mares of the carncro 

 or Don Carlos breed, half-breeds between the English blood-horse Kedger (by Sheet 

 Anchor) and Spanish mares. These Arabs, which had cost, perhaps — not counting poli- 

 tical influence — i? 1,000 apiece, were inferior in hack action and as hacks to English or 

 Spanish horses of one-tenth the cost. I rode the grey with a pack of harriers I kept ; he 

 was an unpleasant hack, and no hunter. I trained them both, and they were distanced by 

 horses bred out of Spanish mares by my English blood-horse ; finally, I put them to the stud, 

 and their produce out of some twenty of my best Spanish mares were inferior in size, early 

 maturity, and market value, to the stock of my blood-horse. 



" To sum up, Arabs are very bad hacks, they are too small for hunters, even where 

 exceptionally they have hunting conformation ; too small and too devoid of elegant action for 

 harness, and too slow for race-horses ; as sires, they are inferior to the English blood-horses of 

 power and symmetry, which are to be purchased when too slow for racing at a less price than a 

 high-caste Arab." 



The one quality in which Arabs excel— endurance — and which they share with Australian 

 horses and Indian mustangs, is not required in those civilised states where travelling is either 

 performed by railways or by post-horses. 



CONTINENTAL ARABS. 



On the continent of Europe, and especially in Eastern Europe, Arab sires are much more 

 esteemed than in England, where hunting and racing have made a tall blood-horse the more 

 valuable animal. 



The small, active, blood-like horses of one district of France (Tarbes) have not been 

 effaced by the popularisation of the English race-horse, because the pasture is too poor 

 to support a well-bred horse bigger than a pony. The native horses of Poland, Hungary, and 

 Eastern Austria, are all of Eastern descent, and " hit " well with Arabs for the purposes of 

 their owners ; namely, for light cavalry, and long journeys over the rolling plains of Eastern 

 Europe in harness. Between the eighth and the seventeenth centuries Europe was repeatedly 



