Читать книгу The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development - John Hankins Wallace - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Antiquity of American racing—First race course at Hempstead Plain, 1665— Racing in Virginia, 1677—Conditions of early races—Early so-called Arabian importations—The marvelous tradition of Lindsay’s “Arabian”— English race horses first imported about 1750—The old colonial stock as a basis—First American turf literature—Skinner’s American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, 1829—Cadwallader R. Colden’s Sporting Magazine short-lived but valuable—The original Spirit of the Times—Porter’s Spirit of the Times—Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, 1859—Edgar’s Stud Book —Wallace’s Stud Book—Bruce’s Stud Book—Their history, methods, and value—Summing up results, showing that success has followed breeding to individuals and families that could run and not to individuals and families that could not run, whatever their blood.

Horses were kept for running, and horse racing was a common amusement in some of the American Colonies for about a hundred years before the first English race horses were imported. This embraces a century of horse history that, hitherto, has been practically unexplored and unknown. For the details of what I have been able to glean of this neglected and unknown century my readers are referred to the chapters on the different colonies. The first racing in this country of which we have any historical knowledge was organized by Governor Nicolls. In 1664 the Dutch surrendered the province of New Netherlands to the English, and the next autumn, 1665, the new race course at Hempstead Plains was inaugurated by the new governor of the colony. This course was named Newmarket, after the famous English course, and Governor Nicolls’ successors continued to offer purses on this course for many years, and after a time there were two regular meetings held there, spring and autumn. Owing to the distance of this course from the city, other courses, near at hand, were soon constructed and racing of all kinds and at all gaits held high carnival. The principal prizes were called “Subscription Purses,” the distance almost invariably two miles, and the weight carried ten stone. The horses that ran were known as “Dutch horses,” and were descended from the original stock brought from Utrecht, in Holland. They were larger than the English horses, and brought better prices, although the latter were esteemed more highly for their saddle gaits. I think the Dutch horses, originally, had no natural pacers among them, but for the pleasures and uses of the saddle they were inter-bred with the English horses and the mixed blood soon produced many pacers. It is probable also that this mixture increased the speed of the whole tribe. Thus racing continued with but few interruptions and without any known changes in the rules or conditions governing performances, except that after fifty years or more the weight to be carried was reduced from ten stone to eight stone. In the year 1751, which was eighty-six years after Governor Nicolls had established the Newmarket course on Long Island, we find the following significant condition inserted in the terms of entrance to the races, for the first time: “Free to any horse, mare, or gelding bred in America.” The simple meaning of this new condition was to “head off” the scheme of some “sharp” fellows who were, probably, then on the ocean with two or three English race horses, with which they expected to “gobble up” whatever stakes or purses came within their reach.

The first record we have of racing in Virginia is to be found in the court records of Henrico County, in the year 1677—twelve years after the establishment of racing in New York. For fuller particulars of this, the reader is referred to the chapter on that colony. The Virginians were a horse-racing people from the start, and it is impossible to tell how long before racing first commenced, but probably just as soon as any two neighbors met, each owning a horse, a few hundred pounds of tobacco were put up the next day, to make it interesting, in determining which was the faster. This racing feeling was not confined to neighbors nor to neighborhoods, but it pervaded the whole colony, and the people of every county had their annual and semi-annual meetings, which everybody attended. Their methods of handicapping will strike the present generation as somewhat peculiar. In their advertisements of the meetings, such language as the following was very common: “Sized horses to carry one hundred and forty pounds and Galloways to be allowed weight for inches.” From this we learn that the tribe of little Scotch pacers were still to the fore on this side of the water and that they were just as fleet as the larger horses, provided the weight was graduated to their inches. There was one feature in these race meetings that will be a surprise to many of my readers, as it was to myself, and that is the fact that at most of these meetings there was one four-mile race. Smaller prizes were run for by horses classed as to size, and it may be noted that there was one class “not exceeding thirteen hands.” At these meetings the distance never seems to have been less than one mile, while on the southern border of the colony and in North Carolina, quarter racing was very popular and very common from the earliest dates, and it was kept up through the greater part of the eighteenth century. For a fuller account of the racing of those early days the reader is referred to the chapter on Virginia.

In this old English, Irish and Scottish blood, full of the pacing element, which we may now call “native” blood, we have the real foundation upon which the English race horse was bred and from which has come the approximate if not the complete equal of the highest type of the English horse, in both speed and stamina. The English and the American race horse came from the same source and possess the same blood, with this trifling distinction—the native mares in England were bred to horses of exotic, Saracenic origin, while the native mares of America were bred to the descendants of that native-exotic combination. Hence, with the original maternal ancestry of the same blood, the combined and improved English descendant of that blood became the paternal ancestor of the American race horse. We must not forget that this “paternal ancestor” had been the result of crossing and recrossing, selecting, breeding and developing for nearly a hundred years, and that he was, therefore, a far better horse and far more prepotent as a sire than the produce of the first cross made under the direction of the Duke of Newcastle. We must not ignore the fact that while there were many stallions brought over in the early days there were also a few mares, but they were so few in number that their influence was hardly appreciable in the new breed to be established. Saracenic blood was touched very sparingly in the colonial days, as even the names of not more than three or four have been preserved in history. The only one of that period fully identified was named Bashaw and was kept on Long Island about the year 1768. Like all the others, he was called an Arabian, but according to the showing of his advertisement he was bred by the Emperor of Morocco, and was not an Arabian. Of the later period and coming down to about 1860 there are twenty-five or thirty that have been called “Arabians.” Near the head of the list stands one called “Arab Barb” or “Black Arabian Barb.” He was claimed to be an imported Barb from Algiers, and was seventeen hands high, “and coarse in proportion.” Many other so-called “importers” were equally absurd and dishonest in their claims, but there horses all passed as genuine “Arabians.” Out of the whole number called “Arabians” not more than five or six seem to have had a shadow of right to the name, and these exceptions were practically restricted to the animals imported by Mr. A. Keene Richards, of Kentucky. That each and all of these exceptions were irredeemable failures is a fact well known to all intelligent horsemen. This motley crew of “Arabian” importations came from all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, except Arabia, were all called “Arabians,” and they were all flat disappointments both as race horses and as producers of race horses.

Out of this list of thirty-five or forty so-called Arabian horses, there is one that requires special mention, not only because a correction may be made in his history, but because I have frequently spoken of him as the only Arabian that had left any mark upon the horse stock of the country. Lindsay’s Arabian, as he was called, was a grey horse and represented to be over fifteen hands high. The story is that he was a Barb and had been presented to the commander of a British man-of-war, when a colt, by the ruler of one of the Barbary States, as an expression of gratitude to the captain for having saved the life of his son. The captain sailed away for a South American port, and while lying there he took his present ashore to let him have a little exercise. The colt was given the free range of a lumber-yard, as the story goes, and in his playfulness a pile of lumber fell upon him and broke three of his legs. The British officer was greatly grieved at his loss and proposed to put the colt out of misery by knocking him on the head. There happened to be an American trading vessel in port and the skipper “allowed if he had that critter on his vessel he could save him.” The officer at once gave him to the skipper and told him his history. Yankee ingenuity and thrift soon got him aboard the trader and he was swung up and his legs properly bandaged. The surgical treatment was good, the bones knit, and in due time the vessel arrived at New London, and the colt was taken to the vicinity of Hartford. Just where this story originated it is not possible now to say, nor do I know that it ever had currency in Connecticut, but it was certainly rehearsed and probably believed in Maryland. He was owned by Colonel Wyllis of Hartford, and was advertised in 1770 under the single name of Ranger, and described as “a fine English stallion of the Barbary breed, bred in England.” From this it would appear that nothing was then known of his romantic history. As a part of his Maryland history it was said that General Washington’s attention had been attracted to a body of Connecticut cavalry by the excellence of their horses, and at his instance Captain Lindsay bought Ranger, because he was the sire of many of those horses, and took him to Maryland, where he was ever afterward known as “Lindsay’s Arabian.” The story of the indorsement of Washington made an excellent stallion card, and it is not necessary that we should inquire into it too closely, for the dates might raise a question. The horse passed from Colonel Wyllis to James Howard, of Windham, and was advertised by him as “The Imported Arabian Horse called The Ranger to stand at his stable the season of 1778.” Hence we must conclude that he was not taken to the South before the season of 1779, or possibly later. Then, as now, to catch the popular fancy, North and South, the horse is no longer an “English stallion of the Barbary breed” but an “Imported Arabian Horse.” His cross was well esteemed in his day, and it has held its place in the estimation of all the experienced horsemen as a good cross in an old pedigree. We now see that he was bred in England, that he was got by a Barb horse or the son of a Barb horse, and that it is not probable there was a single drop of Arabian blood in his veins. This little sketch will serve to illustrate the methods, general and particular, that were invariably used to place a fictitious value upon the so-called imported “Arabians.” In no other department of human knowledge has there been such a universal and persistent habit of misrepresenting the truth of history as in matters relating to the horse. It seems to have been, and still is, a kind of psychical contagion that has been generating dishonesty and a habit of lying in the minds of the great body of horsemen for the past two hundred and fifty years. If a horse is brought from Turkey, or Syria, or Egypt, or Spain, or Morocco, or any of the Barbary States, he is at once called an “Arabian.” This is worse than a misnomer, for it is an essential untruth, and its universal use does not redeem it from its essence of deception and fraud. It must be conceded, however, that this deception may have sprung from bad teaching and ignorance rather than from a depraved moral sense, for many people, as well as the poets and the novelists, may have concluded that as the nations named above got their religion from Arabia, so they got their horse stock from the same country, and thus the horses brought from Turkey, or Syria, or Egypt, or Spain, or Morocco, or any of the Barbary States, are descendants of the Arabian horse and thus entitled to the name “Arabian.” This seems to be the only theory upon which this universal misrepresentation can be palliated. Let us repeat a sentence or two here, to show what history reveals on this point. Strabo says there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era. Philostorgius says that in the year 356, two hundred “well-bred” Cappadocian horses were sent as a present to the prince of Yemen, by the Emperor Constantius. These were the first horses in Arabia. In the days of Mohammed horses were exceedingly scarce in Arabia, and they have remained so to the present time. The horse is an expensive exotic in Arabia, as he is never used for any domestic purpose, nor for any other purpose except robbery or display. For all domestic and commercial uses the camel is far better. All the countries named above were abundantly supplied with horses, at least eight hundred or a thousand years before there were any horses in Arabia. The Moslems got their religion from Arabia, but not their horses. This topic is more fully discussed in the chapter on the Arabian horse.

The importation of English race horses to this side of the water commenced about the year 1750, and that being the middle of the last century it is easy to remember the date when the line was drawn between the old and the new elements appearing on the race course. The following six animals were brought over within a year or two of that date—Monkey, Traveller, Dabster, Childers, Badger, and Janus. A few others might be named, but some at least are mythical. Of those here named, Traveller was the great horse. Janus became the progenitor of a tribe of very fast quarter horses, and although he did not found that tribe, which had been in existence for a hundred years on the border line between Virginia and North Carolina, he doubtless improved it. Monkey was twenty-two years old when he came and did not live long. The whole number imported into all the colonies before the war of the Revolution counts up to about fifty, and some of these are practically unknown, and a few of them were wholly fictitious. Maryland, I think, was first in the field of importations, and then followed Virginia, New York, and North Carolina. Possibly the very earliest importations were made in South Carolina, but there is not much evidence that those importations were utilized to any extent for racing purposes, and hence we know but little of the doings of that colony till a later date. There were not more than about twenty mares of English race-horse blood imported, in the quarter of a century preceding the Revolution, into all the colonies. As many of these animals of both sexes were stolen or destroyed during the war, we can approximate with some degree of certainty the great reduction in this producing force by the time the war ended and importations again commenced.

Now, we have before us the old colonial running stock that had been tested in many a battle and found able to cover the distance of two to four miles, and we have also the new running stock that had never been asked to go any further, but we have no actual, authentic and reliable knowledge of the comparative speed of the two classes. There were no stop watches nor records of time kept in those days. This much only we know, that prizes were offered for “half-breds” for a few years, but when it was found that some of the half-breds could run just as fast and as far as some of the whole-breds, this class of prizes was withdrawn. Then commenced the manufacture of fraudulent pedigrees, for, it was argued, “How could an American horse beat an English horse unless he had English blood and plenty of it?” Hence, when a horse won that fact was taken as proof that he was full bred, and no time was lost in investing him with a first-class, pure-bred pedigree. This was a little onerous on the few imported mares that were known and named, as in the case of imported Mary Gray, for she had to produce eleven filly foals by imported Jolly Roger in order to accommodate her numerous progeny, as alleged, and how many more claims were made of the same pedigree it would be very difficult to estimate. When it began to appear a little awkward to require Mary Gray to have, on paper, more than eleven filly foals by Jolly Roger, it was soon, discovered that it was less perplexing and at the same time less liable to be “cornered” by saying “dam an imported English mare.” No doubt there was a great deal of sharp practice, to say nothing of cheating and lying, about horse matters in Colonial times, but those little venialities were only the blossoms indicating the mature fruits of deceptions and frauds that were to follow when pedigrees would be considered an element of value in the running horse, and when every man would have the power, in fact, to make and print his pedigrees to suit himself. This brings us to a very brief consideration of what has been done in the direction of correcting the frauds of the past and preventing them in the future.

The period of fable and of falsehood in the genealogy of the American race horse seems to have commenced not long after the first importations of English race horses. In the first generations from the imported English horse and the native mare, it was rather difficult for a man to fix up a pedigree for his half-bred colt that would show him to be full bred, but after forty, fifty, or sixty years had elapsed the events became misty, and then every man exercised the right to make his own pedigrees to suit his own fancy. This seems to have been the condition of things for many years, and while there were a few honest men who would stick to the truth, the great majority either made their pedigrees to suit themselves or employed some “expert” to make them for them. The confusion which ensued was most perplexing, and the slipshod manner in which editors and writers on the horse did their work was most discouraging. Whatever was found in print on a crossroads blacksmith shop door was taken as authentic, because it was in print.

In 1829 Mr. John S. Skinner, of Baltimore, Maryland, commenced the publication of a monthly magazine, entitled “The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine,” and as it really “filled a long-felt want,” it received a very encouraging support. As its name indicated its field, it at once became the authority on sporting events and the receptacle of a great amount of valuable correspondence on the horses of the day, as well as the earlier race horses. Mr. Skinner was industrious in collecting material for his magazine, but unfortunately he published whatever was sent to him relating to the horse, and just as it was sent. If a communication was well written, no difference how many errors of fact it might contain, it never seemed to occur to Mr. Skinner to use his blue pencil. Pedigrees were sent in, amounting to many thousands, during his ownership, with fictitious and untruthful remote extensions, and published without any possibility of tracing the different crosses to a known or responsible source or name. Here was the opportunity of a lifetime to “fix up” the pedigrees of stallions to suit the public demand and the fees sought by their owners, send them to Mr. Skinner, and have them duly spread before the public in all their dishonest finery. The early volumes are very rich in the accumulations of pedigrees, such as they are, and hence very valuable. The magazine received less and less attention from its proprietor each succeeding year and finally it was transferred to the Spirit of the Times, of New York, and died after an existence of some fifteen years.

Mr. Cadwallader R. Colden, of New York, commenced the publication of another sporting magazine, that was of very great merit, and did much to correct some of the errors that abounded in Mr. Skinner’s publication. In the controversies which naturally sprang up he had greatly the advantage of his adversary, for he knew horse history and Mr. Skinner did not. Mr. Colden was a man of marked ability, and over the signature of “An Old Turfman” he made himself famous as a writer. He hated a fraud and wherever he saw one he did not hesitate to hit it. His publication was a large and expensive one, racing was then under the periodical interdict of public opinion, and after about two or three years, and greatly to the loss and misfortune of the truths of horse history, the publication was discontinued. The weekly press had no representative in the field of “horse literature and sporting subjects” until early in the thirties, when the Spirit of the Times was founded by William T. Porter. The conception of a weekly paper devoted to all kinds of sports, such as hunting, fishing, racing, gaming, etc., was not only new in this country, but it was brilliant. Mr. Porter was not only a gentleman in his appearance and manners, but he had fine social qualities and was a writer of ability and polish. Such a personage would naturally gather about him friends and correspondents that were congenial, and very soon The Spirit of the Times became noted as the organ of a great body of educated men who loved sport and enjoyed wit. It was the only publication of its kind on the continent, and it soon obtained a very wide circulation. Mr. Porter knew very little of horses, either theoretically or practically, but he was a ready adapter and wrote some fine descriptions of famous racing contests. His habits were sportive rather than industrious, hence he left nothing behind him of value to his friends or to the world except the mere fact that he was the founder of the first sporting paper in this country. In course of time the paper with all its belongings became the property of John Richards, the former pressman, and Mr. Porter had to look for a living wherever he could find it. Mr. George Wilkes then took him under his wing, and started a new sporting paper called Porter’s Spirit of the Times. The use of this name carried with it the support of a good many friends, but as he was not able to write anything, practically, for the new paper, from its very commencement in September, 1856, it failed to yield any support to Mr. Porter, and not much to Mr. Wilkes and his partners. Litigation arose and Mr. Wilkes finally withdrew from Porter’s Spirit of the Times, and started Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times in September, 1859. We then had three sporting papers all claiming to be the original and only legitimate Spirit of the Times. Among their readers they were distinguished as the Old Spirit, Porter’s Spirit, and Wilkes’ Spirit. The circulation of the Old Spirit was largely in the Southern States, and the war destroyed it, in 1861. Porter’s Spirit having but little money and still less brains, died about the same time. This left Mr. Wilkes in open possession of the field, and his remarkably trenchant articles on the conduct of the war gave Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times a very wide circulation, even among those who cared nothing for sporting matters. At the same time he was fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Charles J. Foster, an able writer on horse subjects, and a very industrious and capable man in managing and discussing affairs connected with the horse. Some years later, Mr. Wilkes dropped his own name from the title of his paper, and not long afterward he added twenty-five or thirty years to its age by changing the numbers so as to cover the period of the original Spirit of the Times founded by William T. Porter. The old sporting publications, one and all, maintained the view, so far as they ever had any view to maintain, that all that was of any value in the American horse, for whatever purpose, had come down to us from the Arabian through the English race horse. Their value, therefore, consists wholly in the naked statistics which they contain.

The first attempt made in this country, in the direction of publishing a stud book of American race horses, was the product of Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, an eccentric and apparently not well-balanced Irishman, who was a resident of North Carolina. This book, which purported to be a “first” volume, was very remarkable in many respects, two or three of which I will enumerate. The prevailing absence of dates and all means by which the truth or falsity of a pedigree could be determined; the astounding number of crosses given, even to the immediate descendants of imported sires; the multitude of animals never heard of before nor since, with pedigrees extended a dozen crosses; the absence of many animals that everybody had heard of. This book had been in print about thirty years before I ever saw it, and the first impression it made on my mind was that the author was “clean daft.” At the same time, through all his work there was a “method in his madness,” going to show the care he had taken to exclude or suppress any little fact that might lead to detection and exposure. As an illustration of his methods I will take the following pedigree, at random, as given by him and copied, literally, by Mr. Bruce, following the particular form of the latter:

CENTAUR, b. h. foaled 1767, bred by ——; owned in Virginia, got by imported Stirling (Evans’) (foaled 1762).

1st dam by imp. Aristotle (imported 1764).

2d dam by imp. Dotterel.

3d dam by imp. David (imported 1763).

4th dam by imp. Ranter (imported 1762).

5th dam by imp. Othello (imported 1755).

6th dam by imp. Childers (imported 1761).

7th dam an imported, thoroughbred mare.

Now, what do we know about this pedigree that has been indorsed and published, just as here stated, by two stud-book makers? They do not pretend to know by whom he was bred, nor do they know in what part of Virginia he was owned, but they assume to know perfectly well each cross in his pedigree and that his seventh dam was an imported, thoroughbred mare. The dates of importations in parentheses in the foregoing have been placed there by myself for the sake of the exhibit. The horse Dotterel, the original of that name and by the same reputed sire, never left England, and it is probable this Dotterel is mythical. Now, let us analyze this pedigree by the aid of the searchlight of dates. Ranter, imported 1762, might have had a filly to his credit in 1763. This filly at two years old might have been bred to David and produced a filly in 1766. This filly at two years old might have been bred to Dotterel and produced a filly in 1769. This filly at two years old might have been bred to Aristotle and produced a filly in 1772. This filly, at two years old, might have bred to Evans’ Stirling (or Starling), and produced the colt Centaur in 1775—but he was foaled in 1767. Not once in a million times would this succession of possibilities occur, but if they did occur in this case the pedigree of Centaur still remains absolutely impossible, for four generations of horses cannot be crowded into five years. This exhibit fairly illustrates the character of Mr. Edgar’s work, and being right on the border line between the “native” race horse and the modern “thoroughbred” we see just how they compressed the breeding of eight generations into the space of fifteen or sixteen years. If we were to compare the English with the American methods of manufacturing pedigrees, it would be hard to determine which was the more shamefully dishonest. Mr. Edgar was fiercely dissatisfied with the indifference of horsemen to his enterprise, and with the lack of support which they rendered him. He went forward with his second volume and professed to have completed it, but announced that it should never be put in type until the horsemen of the country should assist and support him. In the event of their failing to do so he threatened to sink his manuscript twenty feet deep in the center of the Dismal Swamp, where no mortal would ever find it. The second volume never appeared, and it is to be hoped he carried out his threat.

For the second attempt at compiling a stud book of American Race Horses I must, myself, plead guilty. Some time in the “fifties” I came into possession of a number of volumes of the “old” Spirit of the Times, Skinner’s American Turf Register, three or four volumes of the “English Stud Book” and a large number of volumes of the English Sporting Magazine. As I was then dabbling slightly around the edges of “horse literature,” I found this little nucleus of a library very convenient, but very unsatisfactory in answering questions that came to me, and which an official position seemed to require that I should be able to answer. When asked for the pedigrees of other domestic animals I could take down the Herd Books of the different leading breeds and give precise information, but when asked about the pedigree of a horse, unless he was greatly distinguished as a racer, days of solid labor might be expended on the one question and then not discover the information sought. It was, perhaps, ten years after this time before I ever saw or heard of the misbegotten and foolish compilation of pedigrees made by Edgar. For some years this labor of compilation was prosecuted at odd hours, for my own personal use and satisfaction, and without the remotest purpose of ever publishing a stud book. As I plodded my way along, finding what I supposed to be a fact here and another there, and often conflicting, I found myself invariably accepting what was longest as a pedigree, as this feature seemed to be evidence not only of completeness, but of truthfulness at the same time. As my gleanings grew in volume my interest in what I was doing became more absorbing and intense, and when I had completed the search of every page and paragraph of my published sources of information, up to the close of the year 1839, I found I had enough matter for a large volume. About this time I came into possession of a copy of “Edgar’s Stud Book”—and I was greatly perplexed to know what to do with it. The copyright was dead and it contained a good many unimportant and utterly unknown things that I had not met with in all my gleanings. Under these circumstances and considering the fact that it abounded in the crudest uncertainties, to call them by no harsher name, I concluded to use his work in all cases where I did not have a pedigree from other sources, to cut off all imaginary extensions and to insert his name, in every case, as the source of information and responsibility. The work then went to press and the first volume of “Wallace’s American Stud Book” made its appearance in 1871. The time and labor expended on the first volume made me quite familiar with the leading performers of the several generations embraced therein, and the work on the second volume went forward with more ease and rapidity, and in 1871 I had completed the gleaning of all publications relating to the race horse, up to the close of 1870.

This second volume, being about the size of the first, was completed and put in due form for the compositor, but never was published. The reason why it was never published may not be without interest to the student of horse genealogy, and I will, in a few words, state that reason. Side by side with the progress of the second volume of the runners, I was carrying forward a careful investigation of the lineage of the early trotters and their progenitors. As there were no trotting records giving pedigrees, I was compelled to go back to the breeders as the only source of reliable information. When I obtained this from intelligent and reputable people I accepted the information and stood by it as the truth; and when I came to compare it with the representations of pedigree made in advertisements of some stallion scion of the family, the truth began to dawn upon me that advertisements, whether in newspapers or on crossroads blacksmith-shop doors, with scarcely an exception, were made up of statements that were utterly false and fictitious. They were made up for the single purpose of securing patronage, and generally traced in different directions to famous and well-known horses. The fictitious extensions of stallion advertisements have served as the basis for the fictitious extensions of families and tribes. When I came to compare the extensions of trotting pedigrees with running pedigrees, I could not discover that the one was any more or less reliable than the other. They rested on precisely the same basis of stallion pedigrees, and no difference whether they appeared in Mr. Skinner’s Turf Register or in a big poster, there was no censorship, and they were both in type—and whatever was in type was generally supposed to be worthy of belief. In one respect the pedigrees of running horses are more reliable than the early advertisements of trotting horses, particularly with those that raced, for they were required to give the sire and dam when they were entered in races, and a failure to comply with this rule was penalized. The sires, therefore, are generally right, but unfortunately the rule did not require the dam to be named and definitely specified, hence any one of a dozen unnamed mares by a given horse could be represented in after years as the dam of that particular horse. Here commenced the trouble in the unnamed and untraced mares that never have been nor ever can be identified. On a careful and sorrowful review of my work of many years I found that I had been working on a wrong basis from the start. Instead of discovering and arranging a great many valuable truths, as I supposed, I had devoted years to perpetuating thousands and thousands of fictions in these unknown, unnamed, and unidentified dams. This is the reason the second volume of “Wallace’s American Stud Book” never was published. The only benefit I ever derived from the work was in its educational aspects. The work made me familiar with the early running-horse history of this country and of England, and taught me what so many horsemen should learn—that a truth is always better than a lie. The more carefully and thoroughly I went into the origin, lineage and history of what we may call the modern race horse, the more evident it became to my mind that the great mass of the running horses of our own generation are carrying, in their pedigrees, the frauds and fictions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to say nothing of the innumerable deceptions and tricks of our own century. To accept and propagate these untruths is simply to, in a manner, indorse them, and an attempt to eliminate them would invoke the clamors of a continent. Hence, more than twenty years ago, I washed my hands of all responsibility for the pedigrees of English race horses, and turned my attention to establishing the lineage of the American trotter, on sure foundations, and building him up into a breed.

The third attempt at compiling the pedigrees of running-bred horses was made by Mr. Sanders D. Bruce, of New York, and as it followed Edgar and Wallace, it was made up chiefly of what he found in these works. The conscienceless fictions of Edgar were accepted without hesitation or remorse, and the central aim seemed to be to make every pedigree as long as possible, whether true or false. No fictitious stallion advertisement was ever too absurd to serve as a basis for the pedigrees of all his kindred. Mr. Bruce accepted everything and rejected nothing, and it is not probable he ever investigated a pedigree in his life. His rule of action seems to have been to please his customers, and to scrupulously avoid all public discussions of pedigrees. This was the politic course to pursue, for any attempt to defend the monstrosities it contained would have wiped it out of existence very quickly. Bruce’s Stud Book seems to have been supported by a few individuals, from the beginning, as a kind of eleemosynary institution, and it is not likely it will ever rise above that condition.

The substantial correctness of the generations extending back for a period of sixty or eighty years, and in some cases even a little further, is a very valuable contribution to our store of knowledge in this department of industry, but, unfortunately, the generations beyond those that may be classed as recent very largely rest upon foundations that are fictitious and fraudulent.

These fictions and frauds are so general and common in the remote extensions on the female side of the pedigree that when we find a string of ten or perhaps twenty dams and not one of them named, known or identified until we strike the twenty-first, and she described as “thoroughbred, imported mare,” we know that this is the work of the professional “pedigree maker,” and not more than once in a hundred times will we be mistaken. This is alike true of both English and American pedigrees of race horses. The modern crosses are comparatively honest, but the remote extensions, through the maternal lines, in both countries are chiefly the products of a venal imagination.

There are some foundation truths in the history and development of the English and American race horse—for they are both one in blood—to which I must briefly advert before dismissing this topic. In announcing the conclusions which I have reached, I am fully conscious that I will come in contact with preconceived opinions that have been very prevalent, if not universal, for at least two centuries.

1. There were race horses in England that had been racing and breeding for centuries before the first Saracenic horse was brought there, and it was not an uncommon thing for the native to beat the exotic, when he first arrived. There had been racing in America, by what we will call the native stock—but they were all English and Dutch—for about one hundred years before the first English race horse reached this country.

2. These horses had been selected with care and bred for centuries with more or less intelligence, with the single purpose of increasing their speed. During those centuries there were not so many writers on biology, heredity, etc., as we have now, but the old aphorism, “Like begets like”—a complete epitome of all science on this subject—was just as well known and as universally believed a thousand years ago as it is to-day. We may, therefore, safely conclude that at the close of the sixteenth century there were many native English horses, descended from lines and tribes that had been selected, raced and bred for generations, that were fully the equals of the best of the exotics, that were brought in about that time.

3. The native stock of England at the close of the sixteenth century, was the stock from which the American colonies received their first supplies, except the few brought from Utrecht, in Holland, to the Dutch Colonists in New York. When brought across the Atlantic, especially in Virginia, no time was lost in continuing their development as race horses, which was carried forward for nearly one hundred years before the first English race horse was imported for their improvement. Their regular racing was at all distances, up to four miles.

4. On this basis of the native English blood, common to both countries, the breed of English and American race horses was built up. The foreign elements brought into England were chiefly from the Barbary States and from Turkey. This exotic blood certainly had a very marked effect upon the horse stock of Britain, but it cannot be said, with certainty, that it increased the speed of the race horse. All the experiences of the past hundred years with these foreign strains have gone to show that instead of increasing the speed they have retarded it.

5. The list of the foundation stock of the English race horse as given by Mr. Weatherby, in the first volume of the English Stud Book, and reproduced in the preceding chapter, is worthy of very careful study, especially by those who seem to think that the English race horse is descended, without admixture, from the Arabian horse. The striking feature of that list is the overwhelming preponderance of other blood than the Arabian, even if we accept all that is called Arabian as genuine. Mr. Darley’s horse, called an Arabian, and Lord Godolphin’s horse, called an Arabian, count for more than all the others put together, in the make-up of the English race horse. Mr. Darley’s horse came from a region remote from Arabia and where a thousand good horses are bred for one in Arabia, and should be called a Turk. Lord Godolphin’s horse—“the great unknown”—will ever remain unknown. He seems to have been traced to France, and, after studying his portraiture, it is probable he was a French horse.

6. Taking this list of foundation stock and viewing it from the standpoint of the greatest lenity and liberality that a sound and careful judgment can accord, we find that the inheritance of Arabian blood in the veins of the English race horse, if there was any such inheritance at all, was strictly infinitesimal. This historical fact in the foundation of the race horse, showing the inutility of Arabian blood, whether genuine or spurious, has been fully confirmed in great multitudes of trials, in both nations, during the past hundred years. In no case has it been a benefit, but always a detriment.

7. The race horse has been bred through centuries for the single purpose of speed. Through all his generations he has been the product of the brains, judgment and skill of his successive masters. Parents were selected that could go out and win the prizes from their fellows. The next generation was not only the product of running parents, but parents that were from running families. Thus grew up the pedigree of the race horse under the direction of thought and judgment. Pedigrees are practical things and full of winners, and in no sense made more valuable by having some supposed “Arabian” cross away back ten generations, that never ran in his life.