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R'S MAGAZINE. 



APRIL, 1861 



PLATE I. 

 THE NORTH STAR; 



ONE Of "the old sort," 



" If there is one animal more difficult to get 

 than another, it is the old-fashioned hackney, com- 

 bining blood with power and moderate height. 

 This class at Canterbury was one of the worst 

 sort; but at the Yorkshire meetings I saw them 

 come out in great force, though even in the most 

 favoured districts I cannL.t award to them much 

 praiie. The old-fashioned hackney has nearly de- 

 generated into the coarse, vulgar, butcher's horse, 

 with generally a coarse head and hairy heels. It 

 is, in fact, a very chance-bred horse ; and though 

 one now and then sees a blood- like cob, it is quite 

 a rarity. This class should be encouraged at the 

 Royal Agricultural Show, and a £30 prize would 

 not be thrown away upon it." So says Mr. Earle 

 Welby, one of the judges at the last meeting of 

 the Koyal Society, and here we fancy is what he 

 means — the old-fashioned hackney, combining 

 blood with power — the blood-like cob, as so ex- 

 actly illustrated in our engraving. What a pity it 

 is that an authority who can go so well, and can 

 on this point write so sensibly, should have 

 marred his paper with such suggestions as recom- 

 mending the admission of cock-tail stallions tobreed 

 hunters from ; or would bring down the character 

 of a national display of horses by suffering none 

 to enter, but that should serve at five guineas each ! 

 If the Royal Agricultural Society would do well 

 in this \vay, it must be careful only not to act upon 

 the advice thus offered in its own Journal. 



The North Star is all Mr. Welby wants — purely 

 descended from the old sort, and not "chance 

 bred" from crosses and mongrels. He is York- 

 shire, too, having been foaled at Thixendale Wold, 

 Friday-Thorp, near Malton, where the Messrs. 

 Cook reside ; a family famous for having bred more 

 real roadsters than any people in Yorkshire, or 

 probably in England. North Star, dropped in the 

 spring of 1854, was by a horse of their own, 

 called Cook's Wildfire, dam by Fireaway, grandam 

 by Performer, and Performer by Pretender. 



Wildfire, the sire of North Star, was by Rams- 

 dale's Wildfire, dam by West's Fireaway, by Old 

 Smoker. Ramsdale's Wildfire was by Kirby's 

 Wildfire, and so they run back, ever preserving 

 OLD SERIE3.] 



the same patronymic, like the Prickwillows and 

 Phenomenons, Cook's Wildfire was a well-known 

 prize horse. In 1856, when three years old, he 

 took the premium at Market-Weighton as the best 

 entire horse of his sort, beating twenty-three 

 others shown against him ; and he also won in the 

 same year at Hedon, Bridlington, and Driffield. In 

 1837, he was first at Sutton and Driffield, as well as 

 at the Great Yorkshire Meeting at York. In 1858, 

 Wildfire again won at Sutton, and also at Pat- 

 rington. To follow the performances of the sort 

 farther back, would be but to echo similar 

 successes. The progenitors of The North Star 

 have carried their twelve stone and trotted their 

 seventeen miles within the hour ; or for a shorter 

 spurt, their two miles in five minutes. Some of 

 them have won as much as four hundred on a 

 trotting match, while they have been sold singly 

 for a thousand guineas each. The "records of the 

 agricultural gatherings for many years past, of 

 course testify to their triumphs. 



And The North Star is worthy of his ancestry. 

 Without a cross of blood in him, but all pure 

 roadster for generations back, he is the very model 

 of what the Yorkshiremen are wise enough to like. 

 As they argue, "Give us the pure sort, of whatever 

 its kind, and then we shall know how to deal with 

 it in crossing. But if we have a stallion of mixed 

 blood we never know how far it is mixed, or how 

 to go on with it, or what will become of it." How 

 say you to this, Mr. Welby, who would not by any 

 means have the roadster chance-bred, but would 

 still sanction such an experiment as the breeding 

 of hunters by putting two crosses together .'' In 

 his appearance The North Star clearly shows what 

 he comes of, although the engraving does not 

 make him so handsome, especially about the head, 

 as in the original picture. This, in the flesh and 

 on the canvas, was very bloodlike, heightened as 

 the effect was by his beautiful black-brown coat, 

 not a very common colour amongst horses of this 

 sort. Then he had the long, strong, sloping 

 shoulders of a hunter, the power of a dray-horse, 

 and a clean flat leg that measured nine inches be- 

 low the knee. His height was a good fifteen-two . 

 U [VOL. LIV.— No. 4. 



