1885 — Very Good English Original dark green cloth bdg. Brief title and "Stirps Arabica Vicit" with a saber and crescent moon gilded on the front board. A very good copy. 4to. (30 x 24 cm). In English. 66 p., 5 engraved plates. First and only edition of this handsome and illustrated book of the first Arabian horses presented by Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, bred by Huntington in North America. Arabian horse breeding in North America properly began with the world tour taken by General Ulysses S. Grant after he served as president of America, it is that in March of 1878 the General and his son Jesse arrived in Istanbul (Constantinople ), after the day the Grants toured the private stables of Sultan Abdul Hamid II are distinctly contradictory. Randolph Huntington was an American horse breeder who demonstrated the possibilities inherent in the Arab horse for the purpose of developing a new breed of saddle and road horses. During his first years on the farm, he bought and sold many colts and fillies as coach horses in New York City. He soon came to recognize the value of the Clay stock in that community which was largely the result of the breeding of a horse called Henry Clay which was brought to the nearby Genesee valley and whose stock was distributed through the valley. On May 31, 1879, there arrived in America two very fine stallions which were presented to General U.S. Grant by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. These stallions were named Leopard and Linden Tree. It is generally acknowledged that Linden Tree was a Barb-Arabian while Leopard was a pure Arabian. Prior to the time that these horses arrived in America, the very favorable results from inbreeding to produce typical Clay horses were shown to be practical. After seeing the stallions, Leopard and Linden Tree, Randolph Huntington at once started negotiations to breed three virgin Clay mares to each of these stallions. He hoped thereby to improve the road horse quality of his horses. In the following years, he called them Clay-Arabs. Since Huntington wanted to breed only virgin mares. Leopard was a Seglawi Jedran, desert-bred by the Anazeh, foaled in 1873 and presented by Jedaan Ibn Mheyd of the Fedaan Anazeh to the Turkish governor of Syria. (Some accounts list Ibn Mheyd as the breeder, while Carol Mulder, with typical caution, makes the distinction that we only know he presented the horse) The governor then presented the horse to Abdul Hamid II, who in turn gave him to General Grant.
