546 THE HORSE. 



powers of speed, and that is the best race-horse which most 

 excels in this quality. But is this the property sought for 

 in a hunter or in a road-horse I Or is a race on a level turf 

 the fitting mean to prove that either is a good hunter or a 

 good roadster? What should we think of a race of dray- 

 horses ? 



Sometimes, though very rarely, half-bred horses are brought 

 upon the regular course ; but their inferiority is always ba- 

 lanced by a large discount in their favour of the weight 

 borne. Arabs and other Eastern horses likewise have some- 

 times been run, but with scarce a chance of success against 

 the thoroughbred horses of the country. Only one Eastern 

 horse, it is believed, ever acquired any moderate reputation 

 on the turf. A race was once established at Newmarket 

 expressly for Arabs ; but the experiment failed, from the want 

 of interest excited, in consequence of the inferior speed of 

 the horses as compared with those of native breeding. Even 

 the first descendant between the native and Eastern race is 

 usually inferior. By the regulations for the Goodwood Cup, 

 the first descendants of Arabian, Turkish, or Persian horses, 

 are allowed a discount of 18 Ib. of weight ; and, when both 

 parents are of these countries, a discount of 36 Ib. In other 

 cases, English race-horses have been tried against the horses 

 of other countries. They are frequently carried to India, and 

 matched against the best Arabs of the country ; but the con- 

 tests, it is believed, are almost always, under a parity of cir- 

 cumstances, in favour of the English racer, although the 

 heat of the climate appears to be eminently unsuited to the 

 exertion of his powers. Sometimes accounts reach us, 

 through the continental journals, of the same kind of trials, 

 with a different result ; but we do not learn in how far the 

 conditions of weight, training, and the like, were such as to 

 put the horses on a fair equality. In the year 1825, a race 

 was run in Russia between two English thoroughbred horses, 

 Sharper and Mina, and three Cossack horses, the latter se- 

 lected, after numerous trials, from the best that could be 



