of Britain may have secured their original horse stock from the Phœnician merchants; but if they did, it seems quite evident that at a later date they supplemented their supply from the pacing element from the North. At the close of the fifteenth century Polydore Virgil, an Italian ecclesiastic, came to England and wrote a descriptive history of the British Islands in Latin, which was published about 1509. Part of this history was very clumsily translated about the time the English language began to assume its present form in literature and learning. In speaking of the horses of the country, he seems to have been greatly surprised with the pacers, and treats them as a curiosity. He says: “A great company of their horses do not trot, but amble, and yet neither trotters nor amblers are strongest, as strength is not always incident to that which is most gentle or less courageous.” It will be observed that these observations were made nearly four hundred years ago, and that the surprise of the Italian was not at merely seeing a few pacers which he had never seen in his own country, but that “the great company” of English horses were pacers. As I have here given an instance showing the surprise of an Italian at finding pacers, I will follow it with another showing the surprise of an Englishman at not finding any pacers. The chaplain of the Earl of Cumberland, on his several voyages of discovery in South America and the West India Islands, about 1596, made elaborate note of what he saw and learned of the new countries which the English then visited for the first time. These notes passed into the hands of that wonderfully prolific writer, or rather compiler, Samuel Purchas, from whose fourth volume, page 1171, the following paragraph is taken: “And I wot not how that kind of beast [speaking of cattle] hath specially a liking to these Southerly parts of the world above their horses, none of which I have seen by much so tall and goodly as ordinarily they are in England; they were well made and well mettled, and good store there are of them, but methinks there are many things wanting in them which are ordinary in our English light horses. They are all trotters, nor do I remember that I have seen above one ambler, and that was a little fiddling nag. But it may be if there were better breeders they would have better and more useful increase, yet they are good enough for hackneys, to which use only almost they are employed.”