1 May, 1898. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. : 365 
re-established English freedom, which had been lost for 200 years)— 
that this British freedom reacts to-day for the freedom of the human race— 
the daily cablegrams testify. But this is quite outside the scope of this paper. 
What I wish to convey is, that it educated Scotchmen to Arab standards of 
what a horse should be. 
After a people are enlightened as to what is best and most desirable in a 
horse—as the Arabs and Scotch are—they may be trusted to conserve the 
merits of their stock. But with a mixed people, as in Australia, coming from 
countries where their experience has been exclusively confined to horses of a 
straight formation, and whose horse authorities have instilled into their minds 
that it was necessary in a horse designed for strength or work—what hope is 
there of these benighted horse-owners effecting an improvement in their horse ? 
The grandest types of horses of oblique formation have been introduced 
in large numbers regardless of cost; but, at the same time, there have also been 
imported animals of the ancient unimproved straight type of formation in 
numbers sufficient to be equal to the undoing of whatever improvement the 
other might effect. The common practice hitherto has been to allow these two 
types to get mixed indiscriminately. So long as this practice obtains, general 
improvement of our horse stock is not within measurable distance. How to 
obviate and overcome this bar to improvement in our horses is well worthy the 
attention of Australian Governments. 
Though the monuments of Egypt show that the Egyptian horses of early 
times were of straight formation—in the light of modern Egyptology—it does 
not necessarily imply that they remained so during the thousands of years that 
elapsed from the time of the first drawings of the horse until, let us say, the 
time of Solomon, 
In Egyptology it is a well-accepted fact that, though other arts and 
sciences made great strides in progress, certain religious superstitions or 
conservatism prevented the artists from varying the style of their drawings or 
improving with their additional skill and knowledge on the works and repre- 
sentations of their forefathers. We may therefore safely take it for granted 
that great improvement had been effected in their horse before Solomon’s day 
(though this improvement remained unrepresented in their drawings). 
We may as safely infer that when Solomon put together his ever-famous 
stud of horses, they were the best that the then known world could produce ; 
that he furnished his stud from Egypt proves to us that Egypt, in his time, 
had the lead in horse-breeding, and we may rest assured they were the best 
that could be secured in Egypt. 
That the horse had been vastly improved on the sculpture type before 
Solomon’s agents appeared in Egypt as purchasers of the best stamps is, 
reasoning from analogy, a moral certainty which it would be sheer foolishness 
to question. ‘The Egyptians, besides being a great war power trusting in their 
horses as their best arm of war, had also a most thorough knowledge of 
scientific breeding, which enabled them to establish a red herd of cattle, 
probably by blending the white European with the black African cattle. They 
had also raised their sheep to lamb twice a year, while incubating factories 
were spread over the land, to which the farmers brought their eggs, which 
when hatched the factory retained one portion of the chicks, the farmers 
taking away the other. With such a knowledge and system of breeding, it is 
not at all credible that their war horses would remain unimproved for 2,000 
years and more. That that improvement would tend towards Arab lines is also 
certain, when we reflect that their only means of improvement was by selection 
of the fittest of their own stock, no better being available. Those horses, 
developing more obliquity of form, would excel in speed and staying power, 
covering as they do more ground with less exertion. The most speedy and the 
best stayers always used for stud purposes would ultimately result in a horse 
on Arab lines. ‘he long-sustained continuity and uniformity of their methods 
of breeding was also conducive to improvement. 
