23. Bloody Buttocks; nothing further can be traced from the papers of the late Mr. Crofts than that he was a grey Arabian, with a red mark on his hip, from whence he derived his name. 23. The Vernon Arabian was a small chestnut horse. He covered at Highflyer Hall, and was the sire of Alert, etc. Alert had good speed for a short distance. 24 & 25. The Wellesley Grey, and Chestnut Arabians (so called) were brought from the East, but evidently not Arabians. The former was a horse of good shape, with the size and substance of an English hunter. This list of twenty-seven different animals, which for the sake of convenience I have numbered, was presented to the public more than a hundred years ago by Mr. Weatherby, the highest of all English authorities, as the foundation stock from which the English race horse was propagated. The uniform omission of dates of importations, etc., discloses the fact that the compiler had no accurate knowledge of the animals or their history, and that he was dependent largely upon very uncertain traditions for his information. It must not be understood that the animals in this list were contemporaneous, or that the list embraces all the foreign animals that were brought in, but only those that were recognized as of value in founding the breed. To understand just what we have to consider, I will place here, in juxtaposition to the above list, the remark of Admiral Rous, at one time the great race-horse authority of England, which expresses the popular opinion as to the origin of the race horse, that is practically universally held in all lands. The admiral says: “The British race horse is a pure Eastern exotic whose pedigree may be traced two thousand years, the true son of Arabia Deserta, without a drop of English blood.” To reach the approximate truth on the issue here made, and to puncture this extravaganza is the work now before us. Numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, were Turks, and to these we may add Mr. Darley’s horse, known as the Darley Arabian, number 13, for he was brought from Aleppo in Turkey, far removed from Arabia, and famous for the great numbers and excellence of its horses many centuries before Arabia had any horses. To carry horses, for sale, from the deserts of Arabia, where they are scarce, to the region of Aleppo, where they are very plenty, and of the highest quality, would be simply “carrying coals to Newcastle.” We may therefore safely conclude that the ten horses here enumerated were Turks. Numbers 4, 7, 11, 12, 16, 20 were Barbs, as they are named in the list. It is a surprise to me that these six horses should be designated as “Barbs,” for it has been the usage of many generations to call these horses “Arabians.” As late as 1819 the Dey of Algiers sent several Algerine horses as a present to the Prince Regent of England, and they were always spoken of as “Arabians.”