THE ARABIAN HORSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 258, 31 October 1925, Page 16

THE ARABIAN HORSE.

LONG SUPREME ON TRACK. NOW FINDS HIS OCCUPATION j GONE. MODERN" BREEDS NOW EXCEL HIM. Tn a group of oldtimers, Trtio had tilted hack their chatre for a horse talk the other day the question came up ac to the future of the oldest breed of fine

hordes in the world —the Arab. In this age of highly specialised tasks end types there seems to be no longer a job" for him. The English racehorse can beat him at any distance that horses now run. Even in polo, for which his fine temperament so admirably 'fits him, the pace has become a little --too iast for him, and bantam thoroughbreds or three-quaxter-breda now domin-.-ate the field. For riding the Arab "facks the trotting action demanded by •-equestrians in the parka or on the *-™->,l.= ..' ;= -r.r.l- \e\ Vio r'nmnarpA wit/1

roads and is not to be compared witn ■ c j£fc* American saddle-bred horse anymore £than with the American trotter for. driving or with the French Percheron. Sfir pulling heavy loads. Yet he has iCbniributed materially to the evolution -,'af. afl these and many other breeds in j.th.e twelve centuries since he came out fcfjfe Asia and Africa. I'v:'Wlien the followers of Mahomet .JcScossed the Strait of Gibraltar in the itjghth century for an attempt to conjijiier the Christian world north of the -ijgediterranean the horses they brought jjjftto Spain were of a type previously un,to western Europe. These MO3--stem invaders ail fought under the banliters of the-great Arabic empire, which *§fien stretched from India to the shores %3i the Atlantic,-and their horses, perUJSps for this reason, became known as SKrabian-. ; The. term has remained in *§jSmmon use to this day to designate not "ISrdy the breed, that comes from the desert of Arabia, but the closely related breeds of Barbary, Turkey and r»*ther3 of Saracenic origin. Kg Beauty of the Arab. KS There never had been seen in Spain S-Sny horses to compare with those ridde-* jS%y the conquering Tarik and his lieutenants. Delicate, refined and beautiful J3Jeyond description, they were, with small heads, slightly dished faces, j£»nc muzzles, thin lips, flaring nostrils, full, brilliant eye 3 and ehaxp, «9alert ears, their gracefully arched and KJnrested necks, their gaily carried'" tails, *£Set high on haunches as elegant "in con«3[our as those of the horse 3 in.ancient SJjfereek sculptures on the Parthenon at --' -* -1 A...1 A..k nnnraa.. rrora

*g£thons. And these Arab coursers were 1 *»*s spirited, proud,. nimble, fleet, and j Bn-actible as they were beautiful, turning i uSr halting with swiftness in the small- , £*$st compass at the signal of their Tiderg • £2§nd running like deer, as if they did . *~lliot touch the ground. , j>; On acquaintance these wonderfully {jjaptivating horses proved to be as •jrfluperior in endurance, intelligence, and all the higher attributes of *3iorseflesh as they were in beauty and SSapeed. The decadent, luxury-loving jSJgloths seem to have welcomed them, nafc-hatever may have been the attitude the conquerors, for we read of jfjffO.OOO horsemen in the fertile seats of |vjGrenada within ten years after the I and of 10,000 horses delivered 1 gKver as tribute by Christians at a I

r 'liutle later period. 11 What They Did in Spain? §j| Following the inundation of this SJeavening Arabian stock the Spanish r-'torses became celebrated above all .. others in Europe. How soon this came JJjjJjo pass we cannot now ascertain, but s£ire know that as early as 940 A. D. many jgSpanish horse 3 were being imported into jhlmglarM; that William the Conqueror a Spanish charter at the Battle Hastings, and that during his reign ~ihi England he brought in Spanish *3iorse3 to improve the British breed, ;i«rwhile the Earl of Shrewsbury at the »Jj»same period imported a number of them ,£>l or breeding purposes at his estate of perhaps the first private enof this kind on record there. *** These and other fragments of horse show how highly prized the *g%pnnisb.-Arabians were at this early in what became the foremost country of Europe, and Bwjhey seem to indicate the wide dis'•;..semination of the Spanish stock long jjpjiefore the Christian nations, at the jj**lose of the eleventh century, began jfijlieir crusades into the horse-breeding J*ssegions of the Saracens, where they jESiad their first opportunity to obtain E&jftrabian horses direct from their native WS? ATrir ia if Tin nvorlnnl-/.' +V»+ A-U.

IZ?7, nor is it to be overlooked that the KJipuke of Newcastle, the most famous Ipiorseman of the world when the breed JjtiDpf English racehorses was just begin|||iing to take shape in the time of the Igptuart kings, recorded his strong for the Spanish horse above r'-imny other as a sire of running horses, iding horses, hunters and all the rest, xcept cart horses. Made English Racehorses. The all-important part played by the Arabian in the evolution of the breed if English racehorses is well known, hough it was doubtless exaggerated by he celebrated English turfman, Admiral tous, when he said: "The British racelorse is a pure Eastern exotic, whose ledigree can he traced 2000 years; the rue son of Arabia Deserta, without one' Irop of English blood in hits, veins." Through the English Tacehorse, and jSjJto some slight extent by direct infusions fiffjjf Arabian blood, the horse of -the was an important factor in the I of the American trotting! . -'-.horse and the American, saddle-bred Dhorse as well as numerous other minor of driving and riding horses, and abroad. It is generally con-| Seeded, indeed, that his has been the one j

&_}great refining influence, on the imprpvea Pnodern breeds of light horses through>ut the world. „ m There have been many importations ißttf Arabian horßes to the United States, | £wt>ut it would be difficult to point out of great importance directly | \p their coming. Among (i 6fe$ ne urst of tne hreed to arrive was the ['• 23P' a y stallion, known as Lindsay's J; ~ ggArabian. that reached Connecticut in ' iSt 66 " '~~' e *' vas l a *- er taken to Virginia,' t Wat : here- he was said to have left valuable i including General George Wash- i i chestnut horse Magnolia, that I HSSLi— t ~~ e st -~ d at Mount Vernon in I SslZr" *■ n 1830 ' tlle chestnut stallion | presented by. the Sultan.of I 1 ?2 ? ' T" brought over, along 1 Pkth two o*^;«&nu*C^tMa^aSd, | and to Kentucky tb imI Rove the horse -.todc -of the cowS ■* Mt has been Pr«. a*£ I I Jackson Henry. ciiy were^hstruM Omental in obtaining them. in «ru W WBy far the most ambitious project in I g&_tt a» A " erw '"*•« ~2S m *£ ill £_£&" '' J_E_R_k '-'

I regenerating in the days of Lexington and Lecomte. Taking with him the celebrated painter of horses, Edward | Troye r "Mr. Richards, Tn 1855, or "1856, j went to the Arabian desert, lived for a time with the Arabs, and brought home i I the best stallions and mares he could I buy. These he crossed with thorough- | I bred racehorses, hoping to obtain run- j ners that could beat the world. When I his half-bred horses faced the starter t I they beaten out of sight. • ■" i« Huntington's "Americo-Arabs." Randolph Huntington, horse breeder j - of New York State, who had a theory i ( to prove, made a somewhat similar ex- j pefiment with Arab blood in raising J ( trotters. The sire he relied upon was l , one of those—Leopard and Linden Tree •, [ —presented by the Sultan of Turkey to |, ' General Grant in 1879. By uniting , | the blood of this horse with that of the j. \ Henry Clay family of trotters, which • was descended irom the imported L [ Arabian horse Grand Bashaw, Mr. Hunt- , I ington fondly hoped to produce some- j thing that could eclipse Maude S.. 2.0 B|.; " When the results of his experiments i 3 were finally sold out at auction in New J T York some twenty-five years ago the j c public appraised the Americo-Arabs at | tt something less than 100 dollars a head., c Just recently W. R. Brown, president j r of the Arabian Horse Club of America,; 1' has demonstrated the exceptional en-J 3 durance and courage of the pure Arab . n and the half-bred in the annual endur- J II ance contests for the Mounted Service , Cup. Carrying 245 pounds in daily' rides of 60 miles for five days in succes- j ■t sion in 1021, his horse Crabbet, bred in ie England by Lady Anne Blunt, won from j J ~ a large field "comprising starters of c several different breeds, while Ramla, lt a little mare of American production '" from Arab stock, was best in the race, 3 ~ in the opinion of the judges, in 1919. *" And Rustem Bey, by an Arab sire out :h of a trotting-bred mare, was first across is the finish line two or three years, r " though the judges never gave him a ls first prize. in The present condition of the Arab )fc breed is closely analagous to that of ie some of the great nations and states of e ~ ancient and modern history. Possessing beauty, endurance and other qualities superior to those of any rival, he has through the centuries given of the in best' of his kind to build up newer ... breeds and types and now finds his occu--1 J pation gone because his .descendants can „i beat him doing almost anything, "■h =====