THE Dr.AG. 335 



thereabouts ; she beat the Arabs easily on their own ground, 

 but I never heard that she was supposed to be worth training 

 in England ; yet would any hounds but fox-hounds, good as w^e 

 have them now^, have kept out of her way in a drag. I don't 

 think it would be going too far to take her as a fair type of the 

 horses that made such short work of Barbs, Turks, and Arabs, 

 in old days, and if so, they must have possessed hounds of great 

 speed ; whether they ever used them in actual chase I don't 

 pretend to say, but they must have had them, and thence came 

 the fox-hound. It is well to remember that, until a later era 

 than this, all agricultural work was done by oxen ; there was no 

 cart blood about as there is now. The indigenous horse, the 

 ponies of Wales, the forests, &c., and the pack-horse, who 

 carried burdens later on (probably a selection by sire and dam of 

 the biggest of these), were all active, hardy beasts. ISTo doubt 

 the first infusion of Eastern blood came in with the Phoenicians^ 

 the I^ormans also brought some Eastern blood here through 

 Spain, into wdiich it had come with the Moors, and thence to 

 France with Charlemagne. We know that a Spanish stallion, 

 derived probably from the big ^Nubian or Dongola horses was 

 imported by Eoger de Belesme (created Earl of Salisbury by 

 William the Conqueror) to his seat at Ponisland, in Wales, and 

 that the horses of that district were noted for their excellence 

 until the days of Michael Drayton ; and very shortly came the 

 Crusades, which must have opened up a stream of Eastern 

 blood, of which no record was ever kept, except when an 

 Arab, or one so-called, came into the hands of a king or a 

 churchman— a thing not to be wondered at when noblemen 

 could not even write their names — but noticing the fact that 

 some very good Eastern su-es probably came into the land 

 during the Eoman occupation, for they took the best of every- 

 thing with them from all countries, and men wdio would take 

 English hounds to Rome would bring Eastern horses to Eng- 

 land for their use, there is a very fair foundation for a really 

 good and speedy race of horses, bred no doubt more for action 



