that he has often been with parties for the sake of coursing
amongst those people, and continued with them occasionally for a
considerable space of time. That by them you are furnished with
dogs and horses; for the use of which you give them a reward. He
says they live all together; men, horses, dogs, colts, women, and
children. That these colts, having no green herbage to feed upon
when taken from the mare, are brought up by hand, and live as the
children do; and that the older Horses have no other food, than
straw and choped** barley, which these Arabs procure from the
villages most adjacent to their encampments. The colts, he says,
run about with their dams on all expeditions, till weaned; for
that it is the custom of the Arabs to ride their mares, as
thinking them the fleetest, and not their horses; from whence we
may infer, that the mare colts are best fed and taken care of.
That if you ask one of these banditti to sell his mare, his answer
is, that on her speed depends his own head. He says also, the
stone colts are so little regarded, that it is difficult to find a
Horse of any tolerable size and shape amongst them.

If this then is the case, shall we be any longer at a loss to
account for the deformity of an animal, who, from his infancy, is
neglected, starved, and dried up, for want of juices? or shall we
wonder that his offspring, produced in a land of plenty, of whom
the greatest care is taken, who is defended from the extremity of
heat and cold, whose food is never limited, and whose vessels are
filled with the juices of the sweetest herbage, shall we wonder, I
say, that his offspring, so brought up, should acquire a more
perfect shape and size than his progenitor? or if the Sire is not
able to race, shall we wonder that the Son, whose shape is more
perfect, should excel his Sire in all performances?