William Ridgeway. The origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse. Cambridge, University Press, 1905. In-8, 538 p., avec nombreuses gravures.

          Professor Ridgeway’s book is a valuable contribution to the study of that vexed question, the origin of the thoroughbred. The main drift of his argument is admirably summed up by himself at the end of the third chapter, though the course of it through the book is not arranged with great lucidity.  He begins by tracing the history of the indigenous horses in Northern Asia and Northern Europe and comes to the conclusion that they were a small and thickset breed of a dun or white colour, big-headed and slow. There are indications in prehistoric times of the existence in Europe of a second race, lighter in build and probably swifter. From this indigenous stock are descended the horses that appear in Babylonia about 1500 B. C., the dun-coloured steeds of the Homeric poems and those used by the barbarian hordes up to about 300 B. C. A little before 1500 B. C., the Egyptians, who appear to have been horseless in the time of Abraham, were in possession of a much finer animal than that which was to be found further north. He resembled the type known to us as the Arab. From the monuments Professor Ridgeway judges him to have been bay or dark brown, colours which the Arabs recognise as the typical liveries of their best horses and which appear with marked persistence in the English thoroughbred. Now at this date, and for many centuries later, there is no proof that horses existed in the Arabian peninsular ; indeed a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary is to be derived from the silence of the Old Testament and the direct statement of Strabo that the Arabs did not possess horses. That the Egyptian breed was highly esteemed is proved by the fact that Solomon was at the pains to import horses from Egypt for himself and for the Hittite and Syrian kings. The same stock is found in the Troad about 1000 B. C. ; to it was ascribed a divine origin and a habitat by the side of the Western Sea. From whence came these dark coloured horses, marked with a white star upon the forehead and famed above ail others for swiftness and for docility ? From Libya, Professor Ridgeway answers, and proceeds to demonstrate by means of monuments, history and legend the existence there of a swift, dark-coloured and docile horse. He is of opinion that the improvement of all breeds, in Europe as in Asia, is due to Libyan blood and that when direct evidence is wanting it can at least be shown that there is no difficulty in admitting the possibility of importation from North Africa.

          The Barb, therefore, and not the Arab, is the ancestor of the modem thoroughbred, and it must be admitted that the claim of the Arab is a weak one. The physical conditions of Arabia would in themselves dispose of the theory of an indigenous stock. Even Mr Blunt was obliged to recognise that the home of the Arab horse could scarcely have been in the highlands of the peninsular (where indeed there is no record of his existence before the 4th century of our era), but he concluded that he must have sprung from the lands bordering on the Euphrates. Professor Ridgeway parries him with the reply that the horse was unknown there before 1500 B. G., and that the horses of the Assyrians and Persians, to judge by the monuments of those peoples, were very different from the true Arab stock. Tweedie, in his History of the Arabian Horse, meets with the same difficulties as those that confronted Mr Blunt, but he does not attempt to supply an explanation beyond the remark that it is absurd to trace back the genealogy of the Arab to Solomon’s mares. That is no doubt true, but the theory of a continuous importation from Africa into Asia cannot be disposed of lightly. ’Ali’s famous charger, Maimun, was of Egyptian origin, to quote a historic example. The birthplace of individual horses whose names appear in the modem stud-book does not in any way affect the argument. The Darley Arabian was certainly a horse from the ’Anazeh tribe and of the best Arab blood, but if that blood was derived originally from Libya he is no more an exception than was the Godolphin, who is stated by Stonehenge, in his Book on the horse, to have been a true Barb. The Emir ’Abdu’l Kadir told Mr Blunt that though the race that produced the five famous stocks of Arabia had died out in that country, it still existed in the Sahara, and the tradition is of value. 

          The history of the horse from monuments is yet to be written, but Professor Ridgeway has indicated how important a thorough examination and classification of all types known in ancient art would prove to be. He has shown, too, that the possession of good horses was, time after time, a determining factor in the history of the world, that, until the improvement of fire-arms in the present century, no nations went out to conquer who were not the masters of a fine race, and he throws out a warning that the time has not yet come to neglect the scientific breeding of the horse.

                                               G[ertrude] L[owthian] B[ell]

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