376 OBSERVATIONS UPON THE PRESENT STATE OF HORSES 
these animals is the business of their lives, and has been for 
many generations back. These people, we are told, never suffer 
a horse and mare to come together unless of equal rank, beauty, 
and merit; and they never allow any of their mares to pass out 
of their hands . The stallions they will part with readily enough, 
but a mare is rarely to be obtained from them, except by fraud 
or excessive corruption. “ The Arabs have found out, what the 
English breeder should never forget, that the female is more con¬ 
cerned than the male in the excellence and value of the pro¬ 
duce. ”— Library of Useful Knowledge , Farmers Series. 
Hike practical knowledge; and I care not where it comes from. 
The Arabs never trouble themselves with theories ; but if there had 
been any truth in that of M. Paquer, they, too, we may venture to 
say, would have found it out ere this; for it is well known that 
in Arabia there is also an inferior or common breed of horses, 
which they are very careful to keep separate from the pure blood 
of the “ true courser of the desert.” 
The point, however, I wish to establish, and the principle for 
which I contend, is the great importance of the mare in the ope¬ 
ration of breeding, not only in a pure and unmixed race, as the 
Arabian, but also in crossing; and as a proof of this, I may in¬ 
stance one district in England, the East Riding of Yorkshire, 
w r hich, I think, will go far to bear me out in this view of the 
matter. This district, or that part of it commonly called Holder- 
ness, still keeps up an undiminished celebrity with respect to 
breeding, and continues to produce as many fine horses as, 
perhaps, it ever did. At the great Howden fair, both last year and 
the year before, there were crow ds of horses, and those, too, of the 
very best description; for there is no fair in England, perhaps, 
that affords such a variety of good and useful horses. In order 
to account for this, I must, in the first place, observe, that the 
Cleeveland mares, without doubt, afford the very best material w^e 
have for a cross with the thorough-bred horse; and these have 
been long introduced into Holderness, where they seem to have 
been prized, and to have been improved and cultivated more than 
any where else. The farmers in that country have long been in 
the habit of doing all the business of their farms with these mares 
(never allowing a black cart-horse to come amongst them); and 
they breed from all the best of them at the same time. Like the 
Arabs, they would not part with these for either “ love or 
money.” Here it is that the greater part of the fine carriage 
horses w r e see in the streets of London are bred ; and to produce 
these, they find a cross of blood on the mare’s side is all the 
better, or even more, provided they can preserve the size , colour , 
