BLOOD-HORSE, ENGLISH. The history of' the blood-horse in England has been so accurately and carefully traced by the late William Henry Herbert, one of the most accomplished writers of horses and field sports, in America,from an Eng lishman's view, that we accept therefrom so much as will give a correct idea and history of the origin and growth of the blood-horse in England. Our authority says: It being, in the first place, admitted that the English blood-horse is the rnost perfect animal of his race, in the whole world, both for speed and endurance, and that the American blood-horse directly traces, without mixture, to English, and, through the English, to Oriental parentage, it is absolutely necessary t o revert to the origin and original creation of the former variety, in order to come at the ped igree, characteristics, and history of the latter. With American blood-horses, it is not as it is with American men; the latter may, iu many cases, trace their descent to an admixture of the blood of many nations; the former, on the con trary, must trace to the blood of the English thoroughbred; or, if it should fail to do so, must suffer in consequence of the taint of any foreign strain. I do not, of course, mean to assert that, in a horse of unquestioned excellence and per formance, it would be a defect to trace to a new and recent cross of Arab or Barb blood; but I do mean to say, that such pedigree would be of no advantage to the character of the animal; since it is clear that, by no Oriental horse recently im ported into Great Britain has the Brhish blood horse been improved-the Wellesley Arabian having got but one offspiing of even moderate racing celebrity, Fair Ellen-while no horse of the pure blood of the desert, by any allowance of weight, has been enabled to win a race on the English turf, though, within the last twenty years, many have been started for prizes. It is believed that no Barb, Arab or Turk, imported into America, has ever got a horse of true pre tensions on the turf, or which has an impor tant race; and yet, within a few years, or dining the second quarter of the century, a considerable number have been introduced to this country, many of them gifts from sovereign potentates to different Presidents of the United States, reputed to be of the noblest breed, and surely, as regal gifts, presumable to have been of true blood. The theory and presumed cause of the worthlessness of Arab Sires at the present day, will be discussed hereafter, when we come to treat of breeding and the influence of lineal descent on the production and transmission of hereditary qualities in the horse. It suffices, at present, to observe that the English race-horse is now on all hands admitted to be an animal of superior hereditary qualities to the pure-bred horse of the desert; and that the race horse in America-the only country wherein he does not appear to have degenerated from his an identical in breed and qualities with the progenitors, to whom he traces his pedigree. Quot ing from various sources the author continues: That horses were introduced into Britain long be fore the Christian era, we have abundant evi dence, and that the inhabitants had acquired great experience in their use is equally certain. In the
ancient British language rhediad is the word for a race—rheder , to run—and rhedecfa, a race. All these spring from the Gaulish rheda, a chariot. Here, then, is direct evidence that horses were introduced from Gaul, and that chariot races were established at a very early period. I would here observe, that this evidence is not to my mind direct or conclusive, as to the fact of the introduc tion of the horse from Gaul; although it is so, as to the antiquity of chariot-racing in both coun tries, and to the non-Roman descent or introduc tion of the British or Gaulish animal. And my reason for so saying is that, as the blood, the re ligion and the language of the Britons were cog nate if not identical with those of some, at least, immediate moment, and is more curious and in teresting to the scholar and the antiquary, than to the horsemen or horse-breeder. From the differ ent kinds of vehicles, noticed by the Latin writers —the carruca, the COIJI1LUS, the essedum, or war chariot--it would appear that the ancient Britons had horses trained to different purposes, as well domestic as warlike. It is well observed by Youatt, in his larger work on the horse, that from the cumbrous structure of the car and the fury with which it was driven, and from the badness or non existence of roads,they must have been both active and powerful in an extraordinary degree . Csar, lie adds, though without stating his authority, thought them so valuable, that he carried many of them to Rome; and the British horses were, for of the Gallic tribes, it is no more certain that the Gallic rheda is the theme of the British rheder, than that it is derived therefrom. It does, how ever, in a great degree prove that the Gallic and British horses were identical, and descended not from any breed transmitted through Greece and Italy, hut from one brought inland to the north ward of the Alps; perhaps hy those Gauls, who ravaged Upper Greece and Northern Italy, almost before the existence of authentic history; perhaps by their original ancestors; at all events, of an tique Thracian or Thessalic descent, and, there fore, of remote but direct Oriental race, in all pro bability again improved by a later desert cross, derived from the Numidian cavalry of the Carth aginian Barcas, long previous to the Cwsarian campaigns in Gaul or the invasions of the sacred island of the Druids. This, however, is of small a long time after, in great request in various parts of the Roman empire. I regret that, owing to the omission of giving authority, I have been unable to verify the latter statement; I have failed to discover any allusion to the facts stated in the writings of Cmsar hiinself ; nor can I recall to mind any mention of British horses, in any of the classical authorities, whether in prose or poetry; nevertheless, I presume, from the general care and truthfulness of this able writer, that there is no doubt as to the accuracy of his assertion. During the occupation of Eng land by the Romans, the British horse was crossed to a considerable extent by the Roman horse—continues the author in the volume first quoted; for which I would myself, for rea,sons above stated, prefer to substitute by the foreing horses of the Roman mercenary or allied cavalry,.