10 NOTES ON BREEDING RACEHORSES. 



that is to say, the dams of the winners of the four classic 

 races, Two Thousand Guineas, Derby, Oaks, and Leger, of 

 that period we find, upon examination of their earlier career, 

 that of those eighty, or rather eighty-two, mares two races 

 resulted in dead heats, which were not run off only thirty did 

 not run as two-year-olds. That early ripeness in a racehorse 

 may be regarded as a proof of health, even with regard to later 

 usefulness at the stud, is further corroborated by Little Lady, 

 the dam of the Two Thousand Guineas winner, Camballo, hav- 

 ing carried off the Anglesey stakes for yearlings at Shrewsbury 

 in 1859 the only race of the sort ever run. I mention this 

 circumstance, however, by no means in support of yearlings' 

 races ; on the contrary, I look upon them as senseless institu- 

 tions, which, fortunately, twenty years ago were abolished in 

 England, the only country where they ever existed. 



The severe training and repeated trials of yearlings, more- 

 over, I take to be dangerous in Germany, where the winter 

 generally sets in and puts a stop to all training operations 

 about the middle of November. In England, and especially in 

 France, where, as a rule, yearlings can be tried about Christ- 

 mas-time, it may be done without detriment to their health ; 

 the more so, as in those favored climates their development is 

 less retarded by the cold, and young horses acquire earlier than 

 in Germany the power which is necessary to bear the strain of 

 training. 



I consider the test by hurdle-racing, and especially by steeple- 

 chasing, rather one of acquired cleverness than of consequence 

 for breeding. The principal race across country in England, 

 the Liverpool Grand National, has repeatedly been won (for 

 instance, in 1863 by Emblem, and in the following year by her 

 own sister, Emblematic, by Teddington out of Miss Batty) by 

 animals not possessed of sufficient staying power to run a mile 

 creditably in even moderate company. This applies more par- 

 ticularly to the younger sister, Emblematic. It is not so much 

 length of distance that constitutes a criterion of endurance as 

 the pace at which it is run. In a steeplechase this is generally 

 so slow that a horse able to race half a mile is never for a mo- 



