8 THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 



dation stock" clearly shows that the Turks predominated in 

 numbers, but, possibly, the Barbs in influence. The Arabian 

 element, in both numbers and influence, seems to be practically 

 nil, and this is the "gist of my offending." The one great horse 

 Godolphin Arabian exerted a greater and more lasting influ- 

 ence upon the English race horse than any other of his century 

 and probably than all the others of his century, and his blood is 

 wholly unknown. Fortunately, a few years ago I was able to 

 unearth his portrait and prove it a true portrait, and in that 

 picture we must look for his lineage. He was a horse of great 

 substance and strength on short legs, with no resemblance what- 

 ever to a race horse. About fifty years after his death Mr. 

 Stubbs, the artist, who prided himself upon representing the 

 character of a horse rather than his shape, came across this 

 picture, from which he made an "ideal" copy of what he thought 

 the horse should have been, which is a veritable monstrosity. 

 These two pictures will appear together in their proper places, 

 where they can be leisurely studied, and the honest and the dis- 

 honest compared. 



The American race horse is the lineal descendent of the English 

 race horse, and like his ancestor he is very largely dependent upon 

 the "native blood" for his existence as a breed. The first 

 English race horse was imported into Virginia about 1750, and 

 he there met a class of saddle mares that had been selected, bred, 

 trained, and raced at all distances up to four-mile heats, for nearly 

 a hundred years. These mares were the real maternal founda- 

 tion stock upon which the American race horse was established, 

 as a breed. The phrase "native blood" is here used as applying 

 to the animals and their descendants, that were brought over 

 from England at and soon after the plantation of the American 

 colonies. Up to the time of the Revolution there were but few 

 racing mares brought over as many as you could count on your 

 fingers but they must have been marvelously prolific, for thirty 

 or forty filly foals each would hardly have accommodated all the 

 animals with pedigrees tracing to them. Quite a number of our 

 greatest race horses and sires of forty or fifty years ago traced to 

 some one of these mares through links that were wholly fictitious. 

 Indeed, from the period of the Revolution, and even before that, 

 down to our own time, the pernicious and dishonest habit of 

 adding fictitious crosses beyond the second or third dam became 

 Ihe rule in the old American families, and an animal with a strictly 



