HORSE BREEDING IN FRANCE. 
403 
creature must have accomplished thirty-five miles, at the least, 
over a very rocky road. The instant it was born, a charm was tied 
round its neck in a bag of black cloth; sometimes in this sort of 
manner is placed the pedigree, a matter of greater consequence to 
an Arab, I fancy, than even the amulet. The best horses are bred 
in this desert by the Anazie Arabs, in whose territory, before the 
conquest of the Wahabees, the district of Nejid was included, 
where the richest pasture of Arabia is found. That name, in India, 
used to procure a high price at all times for a horse. I am amused 
at the recollection of the sudden change in the habits of the Arab 
horses when they come into the possession of English masters, by 
whom they are pampered and petted. They rarely, I think, arrive 
in the East before they are six years old, and fall suddenly into a 
life the most opposite to that they lead in their own wide plains, 
where they are seldom fed on corn, and travel fifty or sixty miles 
a day without a drop of water.”— Skinners 1 Travels, Captain 
31 Regiment. 
As anatomists, we know the foal was intended to follow its dam 
from birth, but not in this manner, the effect of which training is 
manifested in the appearance of the animal in after life, i. e., he is 
of “ too delicate a nature to be useful for (all) military purposes,” 
and from want of size and substance least useful to immediately 
beget horses adapted to carry heavy dragoons, or for horse artillery, 
although, from necessity, obliged to be used for both in India. 
But as an improving cross, that is, to convey the requisites of 
caste, delicacy of fibre, organization, temperament, their utility as 
stallions is undeniable, and they are used at the government studs. 
Had the Arabian, however, been sufficient, Mr. Moorcroft, the 
superintendent of the stud, would not have gone to Bokhara after 
Toorkoman stallions, by which he sacrificed his own life and that 
of his equally unfortunate companion, Mr. Trebeck. 
Captain Skinner would not have seen the government he went 
to serve, with a large establishment of officers taken from their 
regiments, employed exclusively in the stud department, superin¬ 
tending not only the breeding but the rearing of the colts from 
yearlings to give size and substance, by obviating the Asiatic mode 
of feeding and training, and yet failing, after all this, to remount 
their cavalry, and subsequently obliged to send lac after lac of 
rupees to Van Dieman’s Land and the Cape of Good Hope for 
horses, at great financial loss. 
The reproduction of horses neither depends on the English 
thorough-bred, the Arabian, Toorkomanee, or any other stallions, 
nor on the mode in which the produce are bred and trained, but on 
the policy of the governments and the manners and customs of the 
people of respective countries; it is, consequently, continually 
liable to interruption and mutation. 
