THESE TWO volumes are exceptional for their wealth of information gathered from innumerable sources - ancient and modern publications and manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, coins, rock drawings, skulls, etc. The two books should be owned by every agricultural college library and by all serious Thoroughbred and Arabian horsebreeders.

LADY WENTWORTH makes it appear as if only those of our Arabian horses in America which can be traced to her Crabbet Park stud farm in England are of any breeding value. Since we have in the United States an established and recognized Arabian stud book (of growing volume as the years go by), we cannot allow Lady Wentworth's statements to go by without challenging them, and we must present the actual facts about those historical Arabians in the United States whose good qualities and true Desert (Bedouin) descent she questions.

OUR AMERICAN horses of undoubted Arabian blood, imported by Homer Davenport, receive the worst "let-down" in the Wentworth books.

GRANTED THAT Homer Davenport only traveled in Syria and in the North Arabian desert and never in Nejd (Inner Arabia), at least the lady must admit that Davenport went to the same Bedouin tribes from which her mother (Lady Anne Blunt) and her father (Sir Wilfred Blunt) bought most of the foundation stock of Crabbet Park (Lady Wentworth's present stud farm.) Lady Wentworth never went to Arabia or to the Inner Arabian Bedouin tribes herself. All the drawings and reproductions of her "desert" paintings in both of her books are purely Egyptian, Syrian and Algerian in background (the countries where Lady Wentworth lived at times and revisited outside of England.) Her manner of discarding the Davenport Arabian horses and the historical accomplishments of Davenport and many other American horsebreeders who had a great share in the importation of Arabian horses (directly or indirectly) from the Desert, is wholly unfair to these great breeders.

HOMER DAVENPORT imported not only from Desert Arabia, but from Lady Anne Blunt herself (for example, Markisa, Berid, Jahil) and from Lady Anne Blunt's friends, who had bred from her stock.

ACCORDING TO Arabian studbook registrations in America, records show that Homer Davenport's Desert Arabians traced as follows: sixteen of the Anazah (either Fidan or Saba) tribes, and five of the Shammar tribes. Only Antar was born in Aleppo from Bedouin horses, and Abbeian is simply marked as "Desertbred." These records could not condemn a single one of th Davenport Arabians in our eyes. They were as good (or better) than any of the original "fountain-heads" of the Blunts, who bought many of their Arabians in or near Dey (Ez-zor) on the Euphrates river, Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, and other Near Eastern cities, villages and oases. If we compare purity of pedigrees (signed and attested by chiefs of Desert Arabia), we find that the Davenport documents are just as good (and in many instances even more authentic) than the Blunts'. In fact, many of the horses imported by Davenport look much better (more of the true Arabian type) than some of the imported Blunt Arabians.

I AM NOT saying that the Blunt Arabians were not so good as the Davenport Arabians, but I will not let Lady Wentworth's challenge go by without putting on record that some of the Blunt "Desert" Arabians were an inferior lot when compared to the fine specimens of distinguished Arabian type which Homer Davenport, the American, brought to the United States.

LADY WENTWORTH questions Davenport's hunt for Bedouin-bred Arabian horses. She denies that Davenport contacted true Bedouins of Arabia, as he spent only such a short time n the Near East. To this I can only answer: Homer Davenport had the assistance of the Turkish government through the good efforts of our American president, Theodore Roosevelt (well beloved in all Near Eastern countries). Homer Davenport not only saved time (through these valuable political connections) but also "space" in Arabia. Turkish officials in America advised him not to visit Aleppo and the North Arabian Desert before summer, as by that time the migrating tribes of Inner Arabia would be farthest north and west in Syria in their search for pastures and rainpools. In fact, some of these tribes had special permission from Turkish governors in Syria and Mesopotamia to bring their horses into the neighborhood of certain villages (but still in the desert) with guarantee of safe conduct under a flag of truce. This was at a time when blood feuds or political reprisals (for non-payment of taxes, etc.) might otherwise have prevented some Bedouin chiefs and their horsemen to venture so close to settled territory under Turkish sovereignty (and where the Bedouins would come under the Turkish law instead of under their own "unwritten code" of the desert.)

HORSE BREEDERS will ask: How could certain Blunt (Crabbet Park) Arabians, which belonged to (what I call) the "poor lot" of the early Blunt Arabians, win championships in horse shows in England? The answer is: There was hardly any competition to speak of (as far as Arabian horses were concerned) at that time -- 1879 and the following decades -- in England. Even in our time (1926 - 1938) Lady Wentworth competed exclusively against her own Arabians (Royal Richmond Horse show) -- or against Arabs raised in England exclusively or mostly from her own breeding.

IF LADY WENTWORTH'S Crabbet Park stud farm had not been reduced so drastically lately (she used to have 90 to 120 head of Arabians and she has only six broodmares now), we Americans could challenge her with our own Arabians, and prove to her that we in America have bred just as fine a type of Arabians from Davenport's importations as from her Crabbet Park stock -- or from mixing bloodlines of the Davenport and Blunt (Crabbet Park) Arabians. For an example I include a photo of the two-year-old colt "Sartez"(No. 2500), who is an exact 50-50 mixture of Davenport and Crabbet Park (Blunt) Arabian bloodlines. This "little" horse, now 14 hands and three inches, resembles Crabbet Park's "Rasim" in many ways and he appears to have a better head even than the "immortal" Rasim. I wonder what "wrong" the Davenport blood has done to Sartez?

I HOPE THAT many of our readers who own Davenport Arabs will send in photos so that we can show Lady Wentworth what outstanding individuals of Arabian type these Davenport horses have produced. Lady Wentworth criticizes pioneer American breeders and their imported Arabian horses. These men are dead and can't answer to the English lady, but their horses live and we present-day Americans breed from Davenport and other horses. Hence we are maligned, too, if we don't answer the unreasonable charges against the purity and origin of our Arabian horses in America. We set a high value on them! Not only for sentimental reasons, but also for much more serious motives; we want to continue to breed fine Arabians, co-operate with our friends, the Arabian breeders in England and in other foreign countries, and use the best colts to improve Arabians as well as ordinary ranch and other saddle horses in all parts of the world.

LADY WENTWORTH'S criticizing remarks extend not only to Homer Davenport and his Arabians, but also to Randolph Huntington and other Americans and their Arabians. Homer Davenport, Spencer Borden, W.R.Brown, and Albert W. Harris have written smaller books than Lady Wentworth's, but in many respects much more original. Without the books of these American authors the "pattern" of the history and breeding of Arabian horses would lack its finest designs. She passes Homer Davenport's book with the remark that it was "another advertising stunt," and a "highly imaginative book." To Arabian horse breeders all over the world, the Homer Davenport book ranks with Lady Anne Blunt's two books, and whatever material of Lady Anne Blunt's is incorporated in her daughter's (Lady Wentworth's) two volumes.

IT IS WITH deep and sincere feeling that I write these pages concerning Lady Wentworth's generally fine historical books, but we Americans know that our own 2400 living Arabian horses in the United States today, trace at least by 90 per cent to Homer Davenport's, Spencer Borden's, Randolph Huntington's, J.A.P.Ramsdell's, W.R.Brown's, Albert W. Harris'; , Joseph E. Draper's, J.M.Dickinson's and Henry B.Babson's importations from Arabia, Egypt, Poland, France, England, Spain, South America, etc. These imported Arabians were as good as any of the Blunts' and Lady Wentworth's. And some of the American breeders also imported from the Blunts and Lady Wentworth, besides buying from other Arabian breeders in England, Egypt, etc.

SOME OF the Blunt "Desert" Arabs actually came from settled districts, villages in Syria, and from semi-peasants on the Euphrates, and from Turkish government officials, a Christian in Baghdad, a Greek in Syria (Damascus), a Turkoman chief, an Ulema in Aleppo, a townsman of Syria (Hama), and from dealers in India.

DAVENPORT'S RECORD looks clean, indeed, compared to this conglomeration of village and towns-people (and not Bedouins!) from which the Blunts bought at times. After all, these horses were of Bedouin descent -- most of them. All I ask is that Lady Wentworth not make out her conglomerated Arabians to be superior to the Davenport and other Arabians in America. We know that most of the Blunt Arabians are "tops."

THE BLOOD of the "conglomerated" Arabians of the Blunts has been "swallowed" up during the last forty to sixty years in Crabbet Park (Lady Wentworth's stud farm in England) in the overwhelming flood of exquisite blood which the Blunts added from Ali Pasha Sherif of Egypt, and of the Anazeh and Shammar tribes -- the very same tribes (and in certain instances the same families of certain sub-tribes) from whom Homer Davenport bought twenty years later! (For example, the Ibn Meheyd of the Fidan-Anazeh, and many others).

"POOR"BLUNT Arabs of the late seventies and eighties of the last century are in our time so far left behind (six or more horse generations) that hardly a characteristic trace of their faults or blemishes remains in their present-day offspring. Lady Wentworth was anxious to re-infuse new blood (of the most authentic and famous bloodlines of the classic strains) into her Crabbet Park stud. Most notable and best known of all was the (now deceased) Polish_Arabian "Skowronek," who became her leading sire and produced the outstanding Arabians to be found in her stud to this day.

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