THE PURE ARAB AS A SIRE.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 43, 28 October 1867, Page 3

THE PURE ARAB AS A SIRE.

A Correspondent of the Australaliaii gives the following:—“ I trust the any is not remote when we shall see a good stake given at our annual race meeting for all horses the produce of Arab sires. I confess I am not a great admirer of the English horse ,of*to-day; that he has greatly degenerated I believe is generally admitted, and the further he becomes removed from his Arab progenitors, so will ho lose their great characteristic, soundness, beauty, and endurance. If we call to mind the English horses thirty years ago, we must confess that our present animals are unworthy of them. This decline is, I think, greatly atribntable to the absence of pure Arab blood, such as rendered our horses famous throughout the world for more than half a century. To breed horses for the sole purpose of racing may or may not bo instrumental in improving our general horse stock. Endurance not being the great desideratum, breeders think they have achieved a meritorious feat, .if they succeed in rearing a Derby winner; but of the numberless, ill-formed, unsound brutes to be found with high pedigrees they take no account. I think it was during the Crimean war that one of our generals wanted the cavalary to do a littls extra duty in the field, but he was at once silenced by those in command declaring that the horses could not possibly endure such hardships. A little Arab blood there would doubtless have obviated the necessity for such an admission of the worthlessness of the English cavalry horse. Remembering, as I do, the handsome, well-bred, short-legged horses peculiar to New South Wales and Tasmania some twenty years since, I naturally look with some contempt upon our present breed, the produce of the English mongrel. Sporting men of today look with dislike upon a pedigree having a particle of Arab blood, and are yet compelled to trace the descent. Money will remove the latter obstacle, and if we are willing to pay we can find the article. I have not heard what answer has been returned to the request of the Acclimatisation Society, asking the Emperor of the French for some of the Arab horses known to be in his possession. In a climate such as ours, it is little short of a crime to ignore the Arab as a sire, and I will go so far as to say that the introduction of the pure Arab horse concerns us as a nation.

P.S.—Mr Fisher would, of course, bo horrified at being' compelled to put his stud of mares to an Arab horse; but if be could find one worthy of them, and such are to be found lor a figure, oven his racehorses, would bring him more famo as a breeder than all the Fishermans and Stockowners ever likely to bo seen in Australia.