Irish channel, as saddle horses, hunters, and runners. The theory that these “Irish Hobbies” were descended from the horses on board one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, that was wrecked on the Irish coast, is purely fanciful, for they were known as a breed long before the Spanish Armada was projected. The Hobbies were larger and better formed, as a rule, than the Galloways, and more highly esteemed. These illustrations of the influence and power of indigenous blood in the formation of the breed, known throughout the world as the English race horse might be extended indefinitely, but let these suffice. With the “Galloways” and the “Hobbies,” well known to our ancestors two hundred years ago as established breeds or tribes of horses, we cannot avoid the conclusion that they were very prodigal of fancy and very economical of truth when they attempted to clothe Bald Galloway, Leedes’ Hobby, etc., in foreign pedigrees to make them fashionable. Aside from the matters of evidence here introduced going to show the composite material entering into the constitution, structure and instincts of the race horse as he is today, there is another that plays a very prominent part in the combination. When we see a race horse fourteen hands high, and another of equally pure blood standing beside him seventeen hands high, we naturally wonder, and ask, Why this difference in size? The Turk, the Barb, the Hobby, the Galloway, and indeed all the old English racing stock, were very small, scarcely averaging fourteen hands. After we have made every allowance for a salubrious climate and a generous and unstinted dietary we must concede a gradual increase of growth, but these things fail to account for a difference of twelve inches in the height of two horses bred in the same lines for untold generations. The conclusion seems to be inevitable that there were big horses as well as little ones in the original combination of ancestors. From these diverse sources of his inheritance, it becomes plain to the mind of every one that the English race horse is thoroughly composite in the blood he inherits, and it is beyond the powers of analysis to determine whether one element did more than another in making him the fastest running horse in the world.