174 TRAINING IN INDIA 



often turn out the best in the end. These horses take a 

 long time to mature, their powers rarely becoming fully 

 developed before they are eight or nine years old, and 

 until they have been raced for two or three seasons. On 

 this account one should not lose heart because a likely- 

 looking son of the desert does not answer one's expecta- 

 tions at an early date. Arabs can stand more work in 

 India than any other class, and their /or^e is undoubtedly 

 distance. 



A young Australian, say a three-year old, appears to 

 be, allowing for the difference between the dates from 

 which they respectively take their age, nearly a year, a 

 country bred a year and a half, and an Arab two, if not 

 three, years more backward than an English horse of the 

 same age. Many three-year-old English horses (like St 

 Gatien, who at that age, with 8 st. 10 lbs. up, won the 

 Csesarwitch in a common canter against a good field) are in 

 their prime at the " back end " of the season. 



Young Arabs especially, and indeed all young horses, 

 may, with great advantage, be trained and taught to gallop 

 without being brought to the post the season before they 

 are actually run. We generally find a horse that has been 

 raced the first year he has been trained to become in the 

 next season from 10 lbs. to 1 st. better, not allowing for age, 

 than he was during the preceding one. If horses are run 

 the first year they are put to work they will rarely be able 

 to successfully contend against platers, even when receiving, 

 as maidens, from 7 lbs. to 1 st., simply because they have 

 not had time to learn their business. We seldom see 

 maidens which have been run thus come out in anything 

 like their subsequent form until, perhaps, towards the end 



