;o8 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



Tliessalian racehorse. 



mission of the Autotvfe Co. 



sources which the Turf provides in its English thorough- 

 bred sires ; and it is clearly just as useless to expect pure 

 Arab blood to do any more good in producing racers. 

 At a given period it produced the English thoroughbred 

 by processes I have traced ; but it is only from the strains 

 of Herod, Matchem, and Eclipse that we can breed the 

 racer of the modern Turf; and those old strains should 

 as far as possible have been previously reinvigorated by 

 the limestone pastures of Australasia. The function of 



. A i i 



the pure Arab sire now is, in my opinion, to do as much 

 for our Remount Department as he has already done for our Racecourse. Crossed 



with such hardy, typical, 

 indigenous breeds as 

 the Devonshire, Welsh, 

 New Eorest, or High- 

 land pony-mare, the 

 Arab sire will produce 

 the small handy, tireless, 

 beautifully built animal 

 for the Mounted In- 

 fantry of future war- 

 fare. English breeds 

 and English climate will 

 do again what they have 

 done before ; and the 

 Army will be able to call upon small, stout horses from 14.1 to 15 hands, after 



the pattern of Gimcrack, Highlander, and the "good 

 little 'uns " of the eighteenth century, for mounted men ; 

 while nothing better to serve the guns can be imagined 

 than a cross between an approved thoroughbred and a 

 good Shire. 



Scarcely less interesting to me than the breeding of 

 horses has been the development of the human type 



dur j those centuries Q f English Racing I have tried 



T -.!_ ^ 1_ * 1_ i r 



In the picture which sets the owner of 



' Pretty Polly" (1901), with Lane up. 



Thessalian mare and foal. 



From a gold coin of Larissa, B.C. 400, 



in the Montagu Collection. By per- i i 



mission of the Autotype Co. MJ SKCtCn. 



