60 HOW TO BEEED A HOESE. 



of the Oriental races, and consequently that his blood 

 cannot be improved by any further admixture of that 

 strain. Why this should be so, cannot clearly be shown ; 

 but it arises probably from two causes : first, that as 

 the Mohammedan race has degenerated in intellectual 

 energy, in civilization and in power, the breed of hor- 

 ses used by that race has suffered a corresponding de- 

 terioration, owing to the want of intelligent breeding, 

 of care, of management, and to the inferiority of their 

 food, stabling and nurture ; and, second, that the English 

 and American descendants of the same horses have, 

 by the vast attention given to breeding them only 

 from the best and most choice parents, to their more gen- 

 erous nutriment, better housing and clothing, and to the 

 enlightened and scientific culture which they have long re- 

 ceived, been improved in proportion to the deterioration of 

 their ancestors. 



ISTo intelligent sportsman doubts that the English or 

 American thorough-bred horse can beat the Oriental horse 

 anywhere and everywhere, and in all respects. InHindos- 

 tan at the European races, the whole-bred and even the 

 half-bred English horses invariably beat the Indian Arabs ; 

 and very recently an Irish mare, named Fair Nell, dis- 

 gracefully beat all the Egyptian Barbs of Ali Pasha, who 

 had challenged the English Jockey Club to a trial match 

 between English and Oriental horses for a prize of £10,000. 

 The Jockey Club declined to take up the match collectively, 

 because, as a body, they do not own race-horses, and indi- 

 vidually, because the risk of running the best horses in a 

 race of eight miles, which was proposed, over the rough 

 and stony or sandy desert, was held rightly to be too 

 great to justify the sending of animals of great value to a 

 distant and barbarous country. The English residents of 

 Alexandria and Cairo, however, excited by national spirit, 



