THE COLONIAL HORSE 161 



trustworthy, some of them being derived from sale catalogues, 

 in which owners or their grooms assumed the existence of blood 

 in the stock offered for sale which it would not have been 

 difficult to prove apocryphal. 



In addition it was a general custom to allow thoroughbred 

 stallions to roam and breed at will, almost wild, on the exten- 

 sive runs of Australia, thus creating a confusion of pedigree 

 which the stream of time has found it impossible to separate. 

 Nor can the entries in the earlier stud-books be implicitly 

 relied on. The compiler of the New Zealand Stud-book 

 refuses to accord this confidence to any prior to the one pub- 

 lished in New South Wales as recently as 1882. 



At the date of the first New Zealand Stud-book there were 

 only twenty-five mares in that colony whose descent was un- 

 impeachable, and only one hundred in the parent colony and 

 in Victoria. Since then their number has become legion, and 

 the stud-book of each colony is now a thick octavo volume. 



I have not at hand the materials necessary to give a 

 detailed account of the development of the thoroughbred 

 horse in Australia, nor am I sufficiently certain that such a 

 treatise would repay perusal or be in consonance with the pur- 

 pose of these chapters. 



New Zealand bred horses have won most of the principal 

 races in Australia in recent years, and some considered quite 

 second rate in the island colony have won valuable stakes on 

 the neighbouring continent, such as the Winter Handicap at 

 Hennington, won by a horse which had done nothing better 

 than win the Provincial Handicap at Dunedin ; again, a horse 

 called Paddy, who never could win more than one stake worth 

 eighty sovereigns in New Zealand, immediately won 300 sove- 

 reigns at Sydney and other races worth 3007. and ioo/. each. 



For this reason I am entitled to consider that the race- 

 horses of the southern colony are fairly typical of the group ; 

 indeed, it would be easy to argue that the more temperate and 

 moister climate of the islands is so favourable to the breeding 

 and rearing of stock, that horses which have been bred under 



M 



