These Clay-Arabians are as remarkable for their intelligence and docility as are the Morgans. Their action is as clean and elegant and their bottom cannot be surpassed. If this double accomplishment of a single private owner be suffered to be wasted it will be a pity indeed, as well as a national reproach. [Illustration: NIMROD (CLAY-ARABIAN) Bred by Randolph Huntington ] CHAPTER EIGHT THE DENMARK, OR KENTUCKY SADDLE-HORSE The assessed value of horses tabulated by States would make it appear that Kentucky horse-flesh was not more precious than in other parts of the Union. And yet Kentucky horses have a fame that is not approached by those of any other state. This is due to the fact that in a small section of the state, none but horses of high breeding are reared. A few counties give to the whole state a reputation which, I am afraid, the whole state does not deserve. But in the famous Blue Grass region the noblest horses of several types and kinds have been bred for more than a hundred years. It is distinctively the breeding place in America of the English Thoroughbred, and comparatively few men who have gone into the reproduction of these interesting and fleet animals have refrained sooner or later from buying or renting farms in Central Kentucky to carry on their operations. So, also, with the trotters. Indeed, it has been maintained that in this lime stone region, where blue grass is indigenous and where it was found in abundance in the park-like woods by the early explorers that the very bones of horses that had grazed upon it from infancy were harder, stouter and less sponge-like than those from anywhere else. This much for the virtue of the lime stone nurtured merits of the blue grass.