The traditions as to the origin of the Arabian horse are numerous. Some hold that they are indigenous. If this were supported, then the traditions would lose interest. But the traditions are interesting and in general effect were thus expressed by the Emir Abd-El-Kader in 1854, in a letter addressed to General Daumas, a division commander who served long in Arabia and who was later a senator of France. He said that God created the horse before man, and then this domestic animal was handed down: “1st. From Adam to Ishmael; 2d, from Ishmael to Solomon; 3d, from Solomon to Mohammed; 4th, from Mohammed to our own times.” This tradition, it must be said, is very general and comprehensive in its scope, but to the Arabs it has a significant meaning, as they claim that Ishmael, the bastard son of Abraham, was not only one of themselves but their founder, for is it not written in the Bible that when Hagar, the concubine of Abraham, fled into the wilderness, an angel appeared to her and said: “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for multitude. Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son and shalt call his name Ishmael; and he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” Indeed, this son of Abraham was the very personification of the Arabian people throughout their whole history, and he needed horses as the Arabian people have needed them ever since to assist in the forays and expeditions which give to life its spice and its prize. Then again, there is a tradition that Nejd got its horses from Solomon; another that they came from Yemen. This seems to me the same tradition, for Yemen’s ancient name was Sheba; and what more natural than for Solomon to have rewarded with gifts of horses the Queen of Sheba’s people for giving him one of his most satisfactory wives. Then there is a story that has been builded up in our own days by a man who was a Methodist minister before he became a manufacturer of trotting-horse pedigrees in this country. This interesting man in his old age, if he did not resume the occupation of his youth, did study the Bible in the endeavor to show that the Arabian horses never had been much in quality and many in numbers, and that their antiquity was not of any importance for they had not been taken into Arabia from Armenia until the third century. A century or so made little difference to a man like Wallace, who unwittingly gave to these horses two centuries more of record than history really accounts for. But whether the Nejdee Arabs were indigenous or brought into the land by Ishmael, or sent by Solomon, or taken there by the Armenians, it is certain that they were there a hundred years before Mohammed became a prophet, and in characteristics of size, temper and performance they were the same that we find to-day. So that gives us a long record of