The English stud book of the Messrs. Weatherby, the first effort to keep trustworthy records of the breeding of horses, begins with 1700, the only Eastern horse mentioned before this being the Byerly Turk, a charger used by Captain Byerly in Ireland in 1689. Then they had the Darley Arabian, Markham’s Arabian, the Alasker Turk, Leede’s Arabian and the Godolphin Barb. The most important of these were the Godolphin Barb and the Darley Arabian. We do not know exactly whence any of these came, nor do we know the pedigree of any. Indeed, to know, or pretend to know the pedigree of a Nejdee or Berber horse is to show ignorance or to confess imposture. The breeders do not keep or give pedigrees except when they wish to bolster up the merits of an inferior animal. And then they do it because they have been asked to do so by European or American purchasers not acquainted with the Arab practices. It seems as sensible to ask an Arab for the pedigree of a horse as to ask a diamond merchant for the pedigree of a stone. The Arabs have had these horses time out of mind. They know them to be purely bred. What more could a sensible man want? But if the purchaser insists, then he may have any kind of pedigree that seems to please him most. He can have pure Nejdee, pure Barb, a cross between the two, or any admixture of Egyptian, Syrian, or Turkish blood that best suits his taste. But as a matter of fact, these Eastern pedigrees are pure fakes, merely made up things, such, for instance, as the recorded pedigree of the famous Hambletonian, the founder of the standard bred trotter in America. To the Arabs in their breeding, pedigree makes no more difference in mating than it does to the birds of the air or the beasts of the forest. They know that they have animals of pure blood and that the progeny of them will still be pure no matter how closely the parents may be related. There is selection, of course, as inferior males are not permitted to be sires. Instead of that they are sometimes destroyed, or sent to Syria and even to Mesopotamia to serve the mares of those regions where the mares are Arabs but not pure Nejdees. Here is one queer fact about the Arab and Barb blood, and proof also of its wonderful prepotency. So long as it is mingled with other blood not too heterogeneous, the most close inbreeding appears not only to do no harm, but actually to do good. This is particularly so with the English Thoroughbred, the American Morgan, and the Kentucky Denmark.