68 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER 



CHAPTER VIII. 



HORSE-RACING : SOME OLD MATCHES, AND SOME 

 NEW DODGES. 



THERE can be no doubt as to the great antiquity of 

 horse-racing ; the Greeks and the Komans practised 

 a form of the sport, and so did the ancient Egyptians, 

 if reliance is to be placed on the pictorial represen- 

 tations of their every-day life which those peculiar 

 people left behind them by way of history. The 

 Arabs have always been ready to enter their horses 

 in a race, and the Moors of Northern Africa were 

 ever prepared to back their horses and their own 

 horsemanship against all comers. 



In the early period of Britain's history, when 

 horsemen as a rule wore heavy suits of armour, the 

 great object was to get a horse that could carry 

 weight ; speed was quite a secondary consideration. 

 But when gunpowder made defensive armour com- 

 paratively useless, men paid more attention to the 

 speed of their animals, and horse-races became 

 popular. Endurance also was necessary; there 

 were no half-mile races for baby horses in the time 

 of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. 



