Riding and Driving. Collier Price
4.—CAYUSE
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FIG. 5.—DESERT-BRED ARAB STALLION
The horse was found in Britain from the earliest historical times, and new blood was introduced by the Romans, by the Normans, and under many of the successors of William the Conqueror. The Turkish horse and the barb, it is understood, were imported long before the reign of James I., when Markham's Arabian, said to be the first of pure desert blood, was brought into the country; but from that time many horses were introduced from the East, of strains more or less pure. The Eastern horse was the foundation upon which the Englishman reared the thoroughbred, but we must not lose sight of the skill of the builder nor of the material furnished by native stock. The desert strains furnished beauty, courage, and stamina; the native blood gave size, stride, and many other good qualities; the English breeder combined all these and produced what no other nation has approached, the incomparable thoroughbred.
We accept the thoroughbred as we find him. No man can say exactly how he was produced. The great Eclipse (1764) has upward of a dozen mares in his short pedigree (he was fourth in descent from the Darley Arabian) whose breeding is unknown and which were doubtless native mares, for already the descendants of Eastern horses were known and noted. What is true of the breeding of Eclipse is true of many of his contemporaries who played prominent parts in the studs of their day.
For more than one hundred years no desert-bred stallion has had any marked influence upon the race-horse directly through a thoroughbred mare. In the first decade of the last century a barb stallion bred to a barb mare produced Sultana, who brought forth the granddam of Berthune to Sir Archy. Berthune was much sought after as a sire for riding-horses; besides this barb blood he had strains of Diomed and of Saltram in his veins, all of which were desirable for saddle-horses.
Breeds of animals deteriorate rapidly through lack of nourishment and from in-and-in breeding. It is questionable whether a degenerate race may be restored, within measurable time, by the use of any appreciable amount of its own blood; it is certainly bad policy to found a breed upon poor stock. The better plan would be to form the desired type from new strains. One hundred years ago Lewis and Clark found upon the plains of the Northwest "horses of an excellent race, lofty, elegantly formed, and durable," but one could hardly hope to replace such animals from the cayuse ponies, their descendants, without the introduction of superior blood in such quantities as practically to obliterate the inferior.
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FIG. 6.—NORWEGIAN FIORD STALLION
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FIG. 7.—HEAVY-WEIGHT HUNTER
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FIG. 8.—CHARGER
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FIG. 9.—MORGAN STALLION
Some of the range horses of Washington and of Oregon are fairly good animals, and these have more or less of the bronco blood, but all that can be said of the influence of the wild horse is that its descendants can "rustle" for a living where an Eastern horse would starve, and the same thing can be said of the donkey. Admitting that for certain purposes inferior blood must sometimes be introduced for domestic purposes, the better the breeding the better the horse will be. Bon sang bon chien.
The mustang of the southern central plains maintains many of the good qualities of its Spanish ancestors, and is a valuable horse for certain purposes, but we need not consider this animal in breeding for the saddle when we have so many other strains infinitely superior. Polo and cow ponies are not within our intent.
Types and families of horses are produced either by careful "selection and exclusion," or by the chances of environment In the first manner was brought about the thoroughbred, the Percheron, the Orloff, the Trakhene, the Denmark, and every other race or family of real value.
All over the world isolated groups of horses may be found which have become types by an accidental seclusion, and these from various causes are usually undersized and often ill-formed. Such are the mustang and its cousins on the plains, many breeds in Eastern Asia, the Norwegian Fiord pony, the Icelander, the Shetlander, etc., the last-named three being, it is supposed, degenerates of pure desert descent from animals taken north from Constantinople by the returned Varangians in the eleventh century.
In breeding for the saddle, or for any other purpose, the mare should be nearly of the type the breeder desires to obtain, and she should be of strong frame, perfectly sound, of healthy stock, and with a good disposition. If her pedigree be known, the stallion, well-bred or thoroughbred, should be selected from a strain which has been proved to have an affinity with that of the mare. The mingling of certain strains is almost as certain to produce certain results—not, be it understood, everything that may be desired—as does the mixing of chosen colors on the palette. That is to say, size, form, action, and disposition may ordinarily be foretold by the mating between families that are known to nick. The stallion should be no larger than the mare, of a family in which there is no suspicion of transmissible disease, and of good temper, and it certainly should not be lacking in the slightest degree in any point where the mare is not fully developed. The mare might be the stronger animal, the stallion the more highly finished.
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FIG. 10.—TRAKHENE STALLION
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FIG. 11.—TYPICAL DENMARK STALLION
Where the mare's pedigree is unknown, and the matter is purely an experiment, or where she is undoubtedly of base breeding, the stallion, while of superior blood, should not vary greatly from her type. Peculiarities in either parent are almost certain to be found in an exaggerated form in the foal.
It would be difficult to imagine a better horse, for any conceivable purpose except racing, than a first-rate heavy-weight hunter; yet he may be called an accident, as there is no such breed, and his full brother may be relegated to the coach or even to the plough. The large head and convex face almost invariably found in the weight carrier, and in the "high-jumper," are derived from the coarse blood which gives them size and power; but these features are indications of that courage and resolution which give them value—characteristics which in animals of wholly cold blood are usually exhibited in obstinacy. Indeed, while the English horse, each in its class, has no superior, Great Britain has no type or family of saddle animals such as our Denmark, unless one except cobs and ponies.
Of course, where two animals of the same or of similar strains, and bearing a close resemblance to each other, are mated, the type will be reproduced with much greater certainty than where various strains are for the first time brought together; but even in good matches a foal may show some undesirable feature derived from a remote ancestor. Some marks or characteristics of a progenitor reappear at almost incredible distances from their sources. That Boston's progeny should be subject to blindness, or that Cruiser's descendants should be vicious, or that the offspring of whistlers should prove defective in their wind, are reasonable expectations; but that the black spots on the haunches