260 MODEEN FAimiEll. 



Bully rock, Whistlejacket, Dart, and others, some of 

 them out of mares of no great repute. 



Flying Childers was bred by Leonard Childers, 

 Esq. of Carr House, Doncaster, and sold to the duke 

 of Devonshire at three years old ; and according to 

 a contemporary writer, his grace afterwards refused 

 for the horse his weight in silver, which probably 

 would have amounted to five or six thousand 

 pounds, a vast sum for a horse at that time. He 

 was said to be vicious, which seems to be indicated 

 by his countenance and manner, according to his 

 portrait; and, like Eclipse, he was a resolute and 

 headstrong horse. No horse in his time could run 

 within a distance of him over the course. In form, 

 he was short backed and compact, his length to a 

 considerable degree being made up in his legs, not, 

 according to general estimation, the most advan- 

 tageous shape for a race-horse ; but Childers was a 

 horse above ordinances, superior to the ordinary 

 rules of form, by which others of his species seem to 

 be bound : there does not appear in his portrait that 

 depth and slant of shoulder which we have seen in 

 Eclipse. Childers probably did not race until six 

 years old, and never any where but at Newmarket ; 

 and there is an old and probable tradition current in 

 Yorkshire, that his extraordinary speed and powers 

 were first discovered at a severe fox-chace, in which 

 all other horses in the field were knocked up. In 

 colour he was bay with white upon his nose, and 

 whited all fours, namely, upon his pasterns, the 

 white reaching highest upon his near fore-leg and 

 his hinder leg. His head, although well joined to 

 his neck, and his muzzle fine, was rather thick over 

 the jowl. He was foaled in 1715, and his pedigree 

 is as follows : — Son of the Darley Arabian out of 

 Betty Leedes, by old Careless ; grandam, own sister 

 to Leedes, by Leedes' Arabian, which was the sire 

 of Leedes ; great grandam by Spanker, out of the 



