82 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 



"Royal Mares") without telling anybody what they were or 

 where they came from. This view is strengthened by the fact 

 that none of the descendants of these mares, for several genera- 

 tions, ever made a mark upon the turf. If we reject this theory 

 of the "Royal Mares/' we are then forced to the conclusion that 

 the increase of size came chiefly from the large cold-blooded 

 mares of the native stock. The fleet running families of the 

 natives were small, and the imported Turks and Barbs were but 

 little if any larger; hence, if we accept the evidence of our own 

 senses and study the great variations in height, we cannot reject 

 the conclusion that these variations had their origin in the size 

 of the original elements entering into the formation of the breed. 

 What was the extent of the influence of the speed of the old 

 English race horse upon the new race horse that sprang up in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? This is a question that 

 has not been very much discussed, but every intelligent and 

 thinking man has given it more or less thought. Britain was 

 not rapid in the progress of civilization and refinement, but 

 through all the centuries of her history she had her race horses 

 and she ran them. There can be no doubt that many of these 

 native horses could outrun and outlast the best of the exotics 

 that were' brought in. None of those exotics, so far as we know, 

 could run and win. Their value, then, was measured, not by 

 what they could do themselves, but by what their progeny could 

 do; and that progeny, at the foundation, carried half the blood of 

 the old tribes. There were no racing calendars in the seven- 

 teenth century and none till the second decade of the eighteenth, 

 and during all that time the blood of every man's horse would, 

 naturally, be fashionable blood. When the racing calendars 

 were established they were a partial check upon untruthful repre- 

 sentations, but this check only extended to the sire of the ani- 

 mal, and was then not always trustworthy. This left the whole 

 maternal side open to all kinds of misrepresentation, and as the 

 Anglo-Saxon race is fond of liberty, every man exercised the 

 liberty of making his pedigrees to suit himself. Thus, through 

 advertisements, sale papers, etc., great multitudes of fictitious 

 pedigrees, all shaped on fashionable lines, gained currency and 

 were propagated from owner to owner, from generation to gener- 

 ation. On this point I speak from the personal knowledge of a. 

 long lifetime in connection with such affairs in our own country, 

 and I take it for granted that our English ancestors were no- 



