132 The Book of the Horse. 



Smolenska and another Barb called Sultan, crossed with English and Anglo-Arab mares. 

 According to Russian writers, they combine the good qualities of both their parents, and without 

 equalling their English progenitors in speed, they exceed them in beauty, soundness, docility, and 

 aptitude for all military purposes. Like the trotters, they preserve a distinct character, and every 

 attempt to introduce fresh doses of English or Arab blood has failed signally. 



The Duke of Sutherland brought a grey trotting stallion from Russia when he visited St. 

 Petersburg, as Marquis of Stafford, with a distinguished party, on the occasion of the present 

 Emperor's coronation, which he used to drive constantly in single harness in a Stanhope phaeton. 

 This horse was certainly showy in action, with a great display of mane and tail, but coarse, and not 

 of a sort we should care to perpetuate. 



The best Russian park hack I ever saw was a grey, apparently thoroughbred, which was 

 exhibited and took a prize at the Agricultural Hall — the property of Colonel (now Sir John) 

 Dugdale Astley, Bart. The horse was not only beautiful and full of quality, but trained to 

 passade, change legs, and other feats, about which circus equestrians make a great labour, on the 

 imperceptible indication of the accomplished rider. 



An eminent horse-dealer, in his evidence before the Lords Committee on Horse Supply, 

 pronounced some Russian riding-horses imported into Hull the best he had seen — the best 

 "foreigners" he had ever seen — but they were not cheap. If prices justified importation, Russian 

 mares of fine constitution and high quality might be collected for breeding purposes. " Russian 

 horses," says the correspondent of The Times, 1st February, 1874, "generally are, indeed, a 

 wonderful race. Cossack cavalry will keep in good condition when they can get nothing to eat but 

 the twigs of trees; and from what I have seen of them I should say that the St. Petersburg sleigh 

 and carriage horses are the most marvellous breed in the world. Carriages are never sent home 

 here, as in London, after they have taken their owners out to dinner or the theatre. They will 

 stand for hours and hours in fifteen or twenty degrees of frost, after the horses have been heated 

 by rapid driving. Neither do coachmen, so far as I have seen, walk their horses to and fro while 

 they are waiting, but stand them still at the doorway, or get into their places on the rank and stop 

 there. Yet the animals seem to take no harm, and you seldom see one with a cold." Frank 

 Forester remarked the same quality of endurance in the most valuable American trotters. 



ITALY. 



The Government of United Italy is paying attention to improving the native breeds of 

 Italy by the importation of English sires and mares. The climate is favourable, there is 

 plenty of pasture in certain provinces, and tens of thousands of acres might be reclaimed 

 from marsh and jungle if a settled condition of political affairs allowed the Government to 

 carry out comprehensive plans of main drainage, assisted by windmills and steam pumps. 



The mares of Tuscany and the Roman territory cross well with English blood sires, the 

 produce making excellent troopers, with more hardy constitutions than the English race. 

 Horses are not cheap. There are Government breeding studs, but they are insufficient to supply 

 the army. 



The tastes of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of Italy, in the way of horses were strictly 

 military, and His Majesty required a weight-carrier in the broadest sense of the term. On his 

 shooting excursions he invariably rode Sardinian ponies — little brutes, sure-footed as goats, with 

 the fire and fine heads of their Barb ancestor, but very mean hind-quarters, the usual result of 

 chance breeding. 



His successor, King Humbert, is passionately fond of horses, a fine horseman, and has 



