of the Oriental races, and consequently that his blood cannot be improved by any further admixture of that strain. Why this should be so, cannot clearly be shown; but it arises probably from two causes: first, that as the Mohammedan race has degenerated in intellectual energy, in civilization and in power, the breed of horses used by that race has suffered a corresponding deterioration, owing to the want of intelligent breeding, of care, of management, and to the inferiority of their food, stabling and nurture; and, second, that the English and American descendants of the same horses have, by the vast attention given to breeding them only from the best and most choice parents, to their more generous nutriment, better housing and clothing, and to the enlightened and scientific culture which they have long received, been improved in proportion to the deterioration of their ancestors.
No intelligent sportsman doubts that the English or American thorough-bred horse can beat the Oriental horse anywhere and everywhere, and in all respects. In Hindostan at the European races, the whole-bred and even the half-bred English horses invariably beat the Indian Arabs; and very recently an Irish mare, named Fair Nell, disgracefully beat all the Egyptian Barbs of Ali Pasha, who had challenged the English Jockey Club to a trial match between English and Oriental horses for a prize of £10,000. The Jockey Club declined to take up the match collectively, because, as a body, they do not own race-horses, and individually, because the risk of running the best horses in a race of eight miles, which was proposed, over the rough and stony or sandy desert, was held rightly to be too great to justify the sending of animals of great value to a distant and barbarous country. The English residents of Alexandria and Cairo, however, excited by national spirit,
