THE ARABIAN HORSE. 8l 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. 



THE following enthusiastic account of the Arabian Horse is 

 from the pen of Captain W. A. Kerr, V.C. : 



" If centuries of unsullied descent, a masterful prepotency 

 a gift that long and stainless purity of breed alone can bestow 

 mien and bearing haught and high, rounded symmetry of 

 form, the ability to travel far and fast, courage, and resolution 

 to struggle and endure, highly-developed intelligence, a gene- 

 rous disposition, a constitution of iron, bone of hardest texture,. 

 sinews of steel and flinty hoof if these go to make up equine 

 perfection, then the true high-caste horses of Nejd, and those 

 shapely steeds, of equal birth, bred in the plain between the 

 two rivers that drink of the waters of the Tigris and Euphra- 

 tes, are assuredly the noblest of their race. Were proof 

 needed of the Arabian's far back and jealously-guarded pedi- 

 gree, it will be found in his fixity of type, in the characteristic 

 spring of the tail from the crupper. A Seglawia Jedran, a 

 Managhi, or any aseel Arab is distinct from other breeds, and 

 could be produced from no other stock in the known world. 

 All the pride of all his race in himself reflected lives ! In 

 him, ' strength and beauty have come together ! ' So pure 

 and distinct is he of race, so great his power of heredity, that 

 no matter how violent the contrast may be, how radical the 

 cross-out, the mint-mark of the desert remains distinctly 

 visible through several generations. 



" If the Arab lacks the grandeur of physique of such 

 noteworthy specimens of the so-called thoroughbred as Wild 

 6 



