ARABS versus ENGLISH HORSES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 6, Issue 347, 30 December 1862, Page 3

ARABS versus ENGLISH HORSES.

TO THE KDITOB OF THE ABGUS. Sir, — In your paper of yesterday, just come to hand, I find a leading article on the subject of " Horse Breeding," which shows, in my opinion, a lamentable want of knowledge of the subject. I would hardly have taken the trouble of combating the fallacies there propounded were it not that the leading position of the Argus gives to everything therein inserted considerable influence upon the minds of the general public, and this leading article might lead to the introduction of the inferior Arab, to the exclusion for a time of the superior English thoroughbred, for the use of our studs. That the Arab horse was in years gone by the best in the world any reader of history must admit, but that English breeders, by a judicious admixture of different bloods, have established a vast improvement in forming the breed known, as the English thoroughbred, I will endeavour to demonstrate. For many years it was considered that the Arab was equal, if not superior, to the thoroughbred, particularly in endurance ; but anyone well read in horse literature will know that numerous trials took place between them at all distances, and the results were invariably in favour of the thoroughbred. I need not enumerate these trials, as they are to be seen in the pages of Bell's Life in London, the Field, and, though last, not least, in that really excellent publication Stonelienqe, a perusal of which latter would, I thiuk, be of infinite service to your leading-article-on-horse-breeding writer. I will, however, take higher grounds. The aristocracy of Great Britain are the richest, the most intellectual, the best riders, and the best judges of horses of any in the world.. .Their chief amusement is hunting, their great aim.-and object in carrying on that is to be well mounted, and their horses are either thoroughbred, or the progeny of thoroughbred horses, from selected twothirds or three-quarter bred mares. The potentates of Europe, such as Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of Austria, and the dashing Victor Emmanuel — in fact, all of them — make a point of being well mounted, and they are so, for they get j their chargers from England. Is it in reason that, with their power and wealth, they would not find the ways and means to supply themselves from Arabia, or wherever they are to be found, if the Arab was a superior horse ? We hear every now and then of several very high-class Arab horses being sent as presents to our Queen by some of the Eastern potentates, but that is all we do hear of them, they are never allowed entrance into an English stud. What, therefore, is the conclusion thus forced upon us? Either that the English thoroughbred is the superior, or that the intelligence and enterprise of the civilised world is at fault, and the writer of your horsebreeding leading article the only sensible man. Your writer quotes largely from Mahomet and Abd-el-Kader. Mahomet being a smart man was probably a good judge of a horse, and also of a woman (both generally go together), and he doubtless selected the best of both in Arabia for his own especial use ; and Abd-el-Kader, like all half savages, was doubtless very fond of his horses, and pitching good yarns about them. He most probably found that the Arabs were superior to the mongrel-bred brutes that the French cavalry were mounted on ; but he never experienced a charge of an English cavalry regiment, or he would have to change his tune. f

I have been, an enthusiastic breeder of horses in Victoria for the last twenty-one years, and have tried several experiments. I have put-heavy, horses to blood mares, and failed. I have put blood horses to heavy mares, and succeeded. I have put heavy mares and blood mares to Arab horses, and, although. I partially succeeded with, the first, I always made a miserable failure with the latter, — that is, I always got an inferior animal to the dam. In fact, so positive am I on this point from experience, that had I the power I should pass a law making it felony to put a thoroughbred mare to an Arab horse. It is a sacrilege 1 Such a suicidal proceeding is retrograding, and undoing the good that English sense and perseverance have accomplished. That the Aus- • tralian horse has degenerated I admit and regret, but the reason is very easily told. A great demand arose upon the discovery of gold for horsea adapted for draught, and, with very few exceptions, breeders introduced heavy stallions into their studs. The natural consequence was. the uncouth brutes you see now sold in the Melbourne yards, with heavy unintelligent heads, straight shoulders, slack backs and goose rumps, fetching about £3 per head, and dear at that. Many studs in New South Wales were at the same time completely neglected, and allowed to breed as chance directed ; they consequently degenerated into usele v ss^eeds as in South America from the same, caused Those ruinous prices have opened the eyes of breeders, and they are now gradually procuring thoroughbred sires, who will in due course re-establish our horses in their former, and eventually, should no Arab or other injurious mania take possession of the breeders' minds, in a superior, position. In conversing with old settlers you invariably hear those who lived in New South Wales talking with admiration of the progeny of Whisker. Camutur. Emigrant, &c. ; if in Tasmania, of Peter Finn, Bufialo, Bolivar, &c, ; and we in Victoria hold our Komeos, Cornboroughs, and Rory O'Mores in our love. I could mention numberless instances of extraordinary feats performed by horses of the colony (I have ridden many weary journeys myself, and so have most old settlers), but the fact" is too well known to require particularizing. As lam so definitely opposed to the introduction of Arab stallions, I may mention three instances in which they have done injury. The Messrs. Macarthur, of New South Wales, used an Arab, and materially injured a stud that had produced a Cassandra and a Camden. Mr. Icely, of New South Wales, used an Arab, and afterwards a half-bred draught horse, and completely ruined a stud that had given us a Cossack and a Zoe. The late Mr. Aitken, of Mount Aitken, bought Flight, the dam of the celebrated Tomboy, and put her to a very beautiful Arab horse ; the progeny was a useless pony. With which I will conclude, without exhausting the subject. Your obedient servant, H. NOEMAN SIMSON. Bournfield, Dec. 2.