THOROUGHBRED HORSES 37 



the breeds of the Steppes of Kussia, America, and AustraHa, 

 have, with the aid of the Thoroughbred stallions (often 

 unfortunately of very low character quality), influenced the 

 capabilities of their horses. When the celebrated Cossack 

 officer, Hetman Platoff (the celebrated stallion, Hetman 

 Platoff, born 1836, was called after him), about a hundred 

 years ago, during the fight for liberty against Napoleon in 

 the West of Europe, learned to know and to esteem the 

 Thoroughbred and other fine breeds derived from the same, 

 he caused to be imported many Thoroughbred stallions of 

 good and of the best class, into the Cossack breeding stables 

 near the Don, and the neighbouring Steppe breeding- 

 places. The consequence was that Russian cavalry soon 

 after, in fact up to the middle of the last century, were 

 mounted on the best horses an army ever possessed." 



A study of the earliest tap-roots of the various families 

 which constitute the thoroughbred of to-day, about fifty 

 in number, discloses the fact that a number of them were 

 Barb mares, and some of them so-called Eoyal mares ; 

 but in no case, as far as is known, were any of them 

 pure Arabian mares ; and since the Arabian is fleeter, 

 and in many respects superior, to the Barb, the tap-roots 

 might have commenced from superior sources than was 

 the case. The Royal mares may, indeed, have included 

 a pure Arabian among their number, for what their 

 breeding was can now never be known. Charles II. 

 received as part of the dowry of his Portuguese wife, 

 Catherine of Braganza, Tangiers in Morocco, and subse- 

 quently dispatched his Master of the Horse in quest of 

 horses for the royal stables, and the mares brought 

 over by him have since been called Royal mares ; but it 

 must not be forgotten that long before that date there 

 was racing in England, and Gervase Markham, writing 

 in the reign of King James I., bears testimony to the 

 excellence of the English race-horse of that period. He 

 writes : — 



" Again, for swiftness, what nation hath brought 

 forth that horse which hath exceeded the English — when 

 the best Barbaries that ever were in their prime, I saw 



