32 NOTES ON BREEDING RACEHORSES. 



Breeding can be profitable only when in conjunction with the 

 very best material obtainable, and when in the produce nothing 

 is spared to contribute to success. Although a few isolated in- 

 stances, like the late Mr. W. Blenkiron, of Middle Park and 

 Waltham Cross, have of late years proved that wholesale pro- 

 duction of the thoroughbred may pay, yet I am doubtful 

 whether Mr. Blenkiron did not die at precisely the right mo- 

 ment, and whether, without the enormous prices realized after 

 his death at the sale of his too numerous stud, the business 

 would ever again have been able to show an equally favorable 

 balance-sheet. Mr. Blenkiron was an unusually clever man- 

 ager ; he had closely studied and completely grasped the differ- 

 ent phases of the thoroughbred market. On the one side 

 breeding from a lot of untried mares, he at public auctions 

 occasionally threw away, apparently without an object, large 

 sums of money, but in reality in order to strengthen in the 

 public the conviction that he was concentrating in Middle Park 

 the quintessence of the English Stud Book, and to familiarize 

 purchasers with the idea of the vastly enhanced value of the 

 best class of its produce. The actual successes of the latter, 

 independent of the prices realized at the sale, however, were, 

 in comparison to the quantity, but moderate, and would, if all 

 the horses bred by Mr. Blenkiron had been trained and raced 

 for his .own account, unquestionably have ended in his ruin. 



As it is not likely that there will ever again be, in Europe at 

 least, so large a breeding establishment as that sold at Middle 

 Park in 1872, it may be in the interest of the history of the 

 thoroughbred that the figures of that ever memorable sale be 

 not lost in oblivion. I therefore recapitulate them in this place. 



During six days in the months of June and July of that 

 year, Messrs. Tattersall sold in the Middle Park Paddocks 



Brood mares 198 



Foals 119 



Stallions (including Blair Athol for 12,500 gs., Breadal- 



bane 6000 gs., Gladiateur 7000 gs.) 12 



Yearlings 101 



430 



