Of Armenia he says, p. 271: “The country is so well adapted, being nothing inferior in this respect to Media, for breeding horses that the race of Nessæan horses, which the king of Persia used, is found here also; the satrap of Armenia used to send annually to the king of Persia twenty thousand young horses.” The Nessæan horses, so famous for their speed, were the “thoroughbreds” of their day, and there can hardly be a doubt they originated in Armenia, and, just like our own “thoroughbreds,” they were essentially the result of careful selection through a series of generations, and of breeding only from animals possessing the desired qualifications in the highest degree. In the earlier days of racing in Media, it appears that white was the fashionable color, but I am disposed to think that grey, growing white with age, was the color intended to be expressed by the writers of that period. The “albino” color is abnormal and supposed to indicate tenderness and lack of stamina. There is one fact, in considering this question, to which I have probably not given sufficient prominence and weight. So far as the records go, the three countries of Armenia, Cappadocia, and Media are synchronous in having mounted troops in their armies seventeen hundred years before the Christian era. We must, therefore, consider the conditions of these countries antecedent to the period of 1700 B.C. Of Cappadocia we know absolutely nothing historically until it was conquered by Cyrus, king of Persia, about 588 B.C. Of Media the earliest knowledge we have of a historical character does not go back further than about 842 B.C. It should be observed that I here speak of “historical” knowledge and not of uncertain traditions of many centuries earlier. Both of these nations with their distinctive nationalities have, long since, been wiped off the surface of the earth.