14 THE HORSE 



no one would accuse him of being tainted with base-bom 

 blood. With his head and tail carried well up he gazes 

 fearlessly on the world, giving evidence of his noble 

 nature in his gallant bearing, and he it is who has given 

 us our thoroughbred horse, the envy and admiration of 

 the world. It is curious that on the majority of Arabians 

 of high-caste, somewhere or other, often on the neck or 

 quarters, there is a little indentation in the flesh known 

 as " the mark of the Prophet's thumb," which is fre- 

 quently present in our own thoroughbreds. 



In that most interesting work by Lady Anne Blunt, 

 " A Pilgrimage to Nejd," describing her journey thither 

 with her husband, and their visit to the Emir's stables, 

 the proper points of a horse's head are given, as esteemed 

 by the Arabs, and I venture to quote them here. 



" First of all, the head should be large, not small. A 

 little head the Arabs particularly dislike, but the size 

 should be all in the upper regions of the skull. There 

 should be a great distance from the ears to the eyes, 

 and a great distance from one eye to the other, though 

 not from ear to ear. The forehead, moreover, and the 

 whole region between and just below the eyes should be 

 convex, the eyes themselves standing rather a fleiir de 

 tete. But there should be nothing fleshy about their 

 prominence, and each bone should be sharply edged. A 

 flat forehead is disliked. The space round the eyes 

 should be free of all hair in summer, so as to show the 

 black skin underneath, and this just round the eyes 

 should be especially black and lustrous. The cheek- 

 bone should be deep and lean, and the jaw-bone clearly 

 marked. Then the face should narrow suddenly and run 

 down almost to a point, not, however, to such a point as 

 one sees in the English race-horse, whose profile seems 

 to terminate with the nostril, but to the tip of the lip. 

 The nostril when in repose should lie flat with the face, 

 appearing in it little more than a slit, and pinched and 

 puckered up, as also should the mouth, which should 

 have the under-lip longer than the upper, ' like the 

 earners,' the Beduins say. The ears, especially in the 



