THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 83 



better and no worse than we are ourselves. This was the condi- 

 tion of things in England for about one hundred and fifty years, 

 and when Mr. Weatherby was at work on the Stud Book he was 

 overflowed with a flood of those bald-headed fictions, concocted by 

 generations long past, and nobody could disprove them. In 

 this way a large portion of the accumulated rubbish of past gen- 

 erations found its way into the English Stud Book and there it 

 stands to-day, serving only to misguide the seeker after truth. 



The earliest records of English racing commence with the year 

 1709, and at Newmarket 1716. There have been several racing 

 calendars published at different times, but probably the best and 

 most convenient for office use is the Racing Register published 

 by Bailey Bros., commencing with the first and now filling several 

 large volumes. In the early days very few of the winners even 

 had any pedigree, but after the lapse of about fifty years we find 

 it the rule to insert the sire of all winners, although there were 

 still some exceptions. Under this usage it became possible in 

 the course of time to establish the leading facts on the paternal 

 side, and thus the work of the stud-book compiler was greatly 

 facilitated. Those racing calendars, although intended merely 

 to serve the convenience of men who bet their money, caring 

 nothing for blood, served the more permanent and valuable pur- 

 pose of fixing the paternal lines in the genealogy of the English 

 race horse. 



In 1786 Mr. William Pick, of York, England, published "A. 

 Careful Collection of all the Pedigrees it was then Possible to 

 Obtain," thus antedating Mr. Weatherby's "Introduction" by 

 five years. In 1785 Mr. Pick had commenced the publication of 

 a racing calendar called "The Sportsman and Breeder's Vade 

 Mecum," which was continued a good many years. These little 

 annual volumes were well received, and they were the forerunners 

 of Pick's Turf Register, the first volume of which was brought 

 out in 1703. This was the same year that the first volume of 

 Weatherby 's Stud Book appeared, and there was a sharp rivalry 

 between the two authors, not merely as two men, but as repre- 

 senting two divisions of the country. Mr. Pick was a Yorkshire 

 man and Mr. Weatherby was a Londoner. Yorkshire claimed to 

 be the "race-horse region" of England, and the Southrons wera 

 ready to fight rather than concede that claim. This rivalry sur- 

 vived two or three generations of racing men, and it is a question 



