the impure. At least the experiment is worth trying, and as such I hope the Jockey Club will regard it.

In the meanwhile we have what to some will appear an even more important function of the thoroughbred to consider his function as sire. I believe it to be pretty generally admitted that, though the best we possess, the modern British thoroughbred is not an ideal progenitor of half-bred stock. To say nothing of his constitution, which is hardly all we could wish, but which may be to a certain extent due to the circumstances of his forced and unnatural existence, his shape is hardly, even in British eyes, perfection. He is seldom quite sound of limb, nor often quite sound of wind. His back and loins fit him for little weight compared with his size, and he is decidedly leggy. His action too, though admirable for the Turf, wants form and finish. It is generally poor behind, and it is quite the exception to see a thoroughbred trot with all-round action. is, besides, strange in his temper, easily disturbed and frightened, extremely often vicious. His offspring naturally partake in some degree of all these failings, and, though the good blood in him more than outweighs the defects, still he is far from perfect.

He

In every point that I have named the thoroughbred Arabian is his superior. He is sound of wind and limb in nine cases out of ten, whatever work he may have done and however he may have been treated. He has a strength of frame equal perhaps to a third as much again as any other horse of his size. His action is true and sustained; and only eyes wedded to certain types of ugliness can fail to see his beauty. He is, moreover, of admirable temper and strange intelligence, so that it is hard not to recognise in him a moral and intellectual being. This suits him, as no other horse is suited, to be the sire of animals connected with our pleasures-nor is his temper less valuable even from a purely material point of view. None who have had experience in breeding will deny the advantage commercially of breeding from animals which neither savage their attendants nor each other; which, when taken in hand as colts, require hardly a preliminary preparation to be mounted or put in harness; which will suffer themselves to be handled from the day they are foaled and caught by a stranger in their paddocks; which are startled neither by sights nor sounds, and which in difficulties never lose their heads.

As a sire for hunters I can conceive no more admirable type than a well-chosen Anazeh horse, with the long shoulder some of them possess, and the deep ribs and well-knit loins which are their special points of power. In courage across country the Arab is without a rival, and his is a courage tempered with intelligence. He is not only a big but a clever jumper, and one that delights in his work.

It is, however, as a breeder of carriage stock that I believe him to be specially superior to the English thoroughbred. There his soundness of foot and limb and his true action would find all their

advantage, while his low wither would be of little consequence. Nearly every Arabian I have put in harness has proved a fast and showy trotter, displaying, moreover, a power of draught quite disproportionate to his size.

It is my opinion that the thoroughbred Arab is seen less to his advantage as a hack than in any other circumstances. In spite of his finely-shaped shoulder, the low wither gives a more forward seat to his rider than is suited to the English taste. He is, however, excellent in all his paces, being as fast and safe a walker as the crossbred straight-shouldered animal which represents him in India is the contrary. I have ridden him many thousand miles, and have never yet been put down' on the road.

As size is a condition sine quá non for most purposes in England, I feel that something needs to be said on that head. I have every reason to believe that pure Arabian produce, bred in England, will in the first generation reach the height of 15 hands 2 inches. I have at present in my stud farm a yearling colt measuring already 14.2, although his dam is hardly that height, and I believe it to be a fact that crossbred produce from an Arabian sire is always taller than the mean height of sire and dam. That this should be so seems to me quite accountable. The Arabian of 15 hands is not a big pony but a little horse-little only through the circumstances of his breeding, and ready at once to develop as Nature under kindlier influences intended him to do. It may seem a paradox to say it, but I believe size to be no less a quality of the racing Anazeh than speed. The English racehorse of 1700, if we may believe Admiral Rous, was under 15 hands in height, being then, as I have shown, by no means a pure Arabian, whereas immediately after the infusion of Darley blood he rose to 16 and 16.2. The soil and climate of England will, I doubt not, do now what it did then; and I think it is the Duke of Newcastle who remarks there is no fear of having too small horses in England, since the moisture of the climate and the fatness of the land rather produce horses too large.' Neither do I doubt that in Arabian cross-breeding a like result will be obtained.

Lastly, the Arabian has this in his favour as a sire. He is less likely, from the real purity of his blood, to get those strange sports of Nature which are the curse of breeders, misshapen offspring recalling some ancient stain in not a stainless pedigree. The true Arabian may be trusted to reproduce his kind after his own image and likeness, and of a particular type. It will rarely happen to the breeder of Arabians that a colt is born useless for any purpose in the world, except, as they say, 'to have his throat cut or be run in a hansom.' Whether he be bred a racehorse or not, the Arab will always find a market as long as cavalry is used in England or on the Continent. He is a cheap horse to breed, doing well on what would starve an English thoroughbred, and requiring less stable work from VOL. VIII.-No. 43.

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his docility. Above all, whatever diseases he may acquire in time, he starts now with a clean bill of health, inheriting none of those weaknesses of constitution which beset our present racing stock. He endures cold as he endures heat, fasting as plenty, and hard work as idleness. Nothing comes to him amiss. For what other creature under heaven can we say so much?

Such, then, are the considerations which have determined Lord Calthorpe and some of his friends to support a scheme for the encouragement of thoroughbred Arab breeding in England. The English Jockey Club, though not exactly, like the French, a 'society for the encouragement of horse-breeding,' can do much towards countenancing and assisting the scheme. The establishment of a weightfor-age race for Arabs, with a respectable stake to run for, would be a decided inducement to all, who have hitherto had a sentimental love only for the Arabian, to breed him seriously; and the present is, as I have explained, an admirable opportunity for obtaining the requisite blood. We may hope, if races are established in England, to obtain similar support in France, Italy, and Germany, whose Jockey Clubs have been always ready to take a hint from ours, and in all which countries Arab studs are found. These, it is true, are not now devoted to racing, but to military purposes, although in time they will become so. The colonies, and especially the Cape of Good Hope, where the Arabian is already in high estimation, may be expected to come forward. At first it can hardly be anticipated that Arab entries should be numerous; but all things must have their beginning.

Should the event justify at all Lord Calthorpe's hopes and those of his friends, the future has much in store for those who will try the experiment. The idea has in it nothing contrary to English traditions, and may be productive of incalculable good to the country. Sportsmen will no doubt receive it at first merely as an experiment; and they will do well, for such it is. But it is possible for a sanguine mind to look forward to the day when a new race of thoroughbreds, this time really thoroughbred, shall have taken its place without help ..or favour on the English Turf, and a more perfect animal have been .contrived for the stud than any that England has yet possessed.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since the foregoing pages were written my original letter to Lord Calthorpe has been published by order of the Stewards of the Jockey Club, and a certain amount of correspondence has resulted in the sporting press concerning it. As might have been expected, the scheme has found opponents, partisans of the existing order of things as the best possible in the best of possible worlds. To these I can hardly expect that what I have now written will prove convincing, but I trust that it may

be taken by them as an answer to most of their objections. On one matter, however, I feel that I have perhaps been hardly quite explicit. My belief in the innate superiority of the Kehîlan does not blind me to the existing merits of the English thoroughbred. I believe him to be, next to the Arabian, the purest bred horse in the world, and of all now the fastest. It is impossible for me, nevertheless, to accept as strictly exact his title to thoroughbreeding. By the avowal of his warmest friends his blood is the result of more than one ingredient, itself not pure, while the very name of thoroughbred has been his hardly for two hundred years. The Arabian, on the other hand, is the descendant of a single race kept pure since its first domestication, and bred with fanatical reverence for many hundreds-probably for many thousands of years; and it has, moreover, been accepted as the one thoroughbred horse of Asia certainly from the time of Mahomet. At that time, the seventh century, the Kehîlan overran Asia, and Northern Africa, and Spain, leaving everywhere the token of his superiority in the semi-Arabian stock which has there replaced indigenous breeds. Neither Persian, nor Turk, nor Barb, nor Andalusian, are pure races. They are half-bred Arabs, owing to the Kehilan all their quality. So, too, is the English horse, whose very name 'thoroughbred' is but a paraphrase of the Kheyl asilat' of Arabia, and whose pretension to true blood is but a copy of theirs. England, it is true, possesses a noble horse, but there is still a nobler; and she should possess it too. This is my reason for pressing the Arabian's claims upon my countrymen.

ENGLISH RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL.

'Die Hauptsache überall die ist, die Erkenntniss von der Meinung zu unterscheiden.'-F. E. D. SCHLEIERMACHER.

PEREMPTORY and unreasoned pronouncements as to what is bad English are not the least of the minor pests which vex our enlightened age; and the bulk of them, as the better-informed are well aware, may be traced to persons who have given only very slight attention to verbal criticism. The effective disseminators of these pronouncements are, indeed, far from numerous. By these we mean, for the most part, those would-be philologists who collect waifs and strays of antipathies and prejudices, amplify the worthless hoard by their own whimseys, and, to the augmentation of vulgar error, digest the whole into essays and volumes. That, however, their utterances should be echoed unquestioningly by the demi-literate, and adopted as subordinate articles of the Philistine creed, is only what might be expected. Far more readily than the contrary, whatever partakes of the nature of disparagement may calculate on popular acceptance. Account should be taken, also, that any seeming evidence of a man's superiority to his associates is, in general, a source of keen gratification to him. Of all that he claims as his own, nothing is likely to raise him higher in his own conceit than his fancied possession of knowledge to which, with the elegance implied in it, they are strangers. Then again, research, or even patient reflection, where the subject-matter lies deeper than the most obvious superficialities, is a characteristic of scholars, and, as being so, is entirely secure from appropriation by the half-educated and their favourite guides. All things considered, we may be thankful, and perhaps we ought to be surprised, that the conceit of omniscience, original and derived, touching propriety in English, is not more widely diffused than we find it to be.

Nevertheless, instinctive legislation concerning our language is too frequent and too obtrusive to be endured without occasional protest. Suspicion of its temerity can hardly occur to those who indulge in it deliberately. That they should see the matter in ita true light, that they should surmise its utter presumptuousness, their