THE ARAB HORSE 



H. K. Bush-Brow:s, Washington, D. C. 



Secretary-Treasurer, The Arabian Horse Club of America 



ORIGIN 



The earliest histories and sculptural 

 records depict the horse, and usually the 

 Arab horse. There is &ome question as to 

 whether this ancient type of horse was first 

 known in Assyria or in Northern Africa. 

 He is sometimes spoken of as the African 

 horse to distinguish him from the Forest 

 horse, which originated in Europe, and is 

 therefore called the European horse. 



So far as can be determined there are 

 four species of horses : first, the Forest horse from which we have 

 the draft types, commonly called ^'cold-blooded"; second, the 

 Arab horse or hot-blooded horse, from which we have all the light 

 and fleet horses, and the admixtures of these two giving the coach 

 types ; third, the Arctic horse or pony, represented by the Norway 

 horse, the Conamara pony, and the small horse from the Xorth 

 British Islands ; fourth, the Prezwalski horse, recently discovered 

 in a wild state in Central Africa, only a few of which are to be 

 found and these are in zoological parks. 



ANATOMY 



The earliest fossil type of horse had five toes and five developed 

 hoofs; he was small, long-bodied with arched back. Then came 

 the three-toed fellow, and finally the one-toed horse as we know 

 him, with the two side toes only in rudimentary form and called the 

 splint bones. These fossil types had one more vertebrae than 

 the modern horses, which peculiarly reasserts itself now in our 

 sometimes finding seven instead of six lumbar vertebrae. The 

 draft t^'pes have the regulation twenty-four vertebrae; still they 

 are further elongated in the body by the thicker padding between 

 the bones, and are from four to eleven per cent longer than they 

 are high at the withers. In contrast to this the body of an Arab 



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