THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 87 



-were antagonistic, if in nothing more, certainly in the habit of 

 action. The one never moved in the lateral action and the other 

 Tery generally adopted that form of progression because it was 

 his inheritance. What might have been the result if left to the 

 laws of "natural selection," it would be impossible to decide; 

 but with the dictates of profit to the master, the mandates of 

 fashion, and above all the accepted teachings of the Duke of 

 Newcastle, the little pacer had no "friends at court," and all he 

 could do was to get out of the way, with his lateral action. In 

 our own country and under the observation of everybody the 

 pacer shows great tenacity to his long-inherited habit of action, 

 and although buried in non-pacing blood, as supposed, for two or 

 three generations, the pace is liable to appear again, at any time. 

 So it was, doubtless in English experiences, but as the revolution 

 was not retarded by the development of pacing speed, in one 

 hundred years from the restoration, in 1660, there was no longer 

 a pacer on British soil. 



When the first Mr. Weatherby assumed the task of making and 

 keeping a registry of English race horses, he seems to have had 

 only a very faint conception of the magnitude of the undertak- 

 ing. The first volume of his "General Stud Book" was published 

 in 1803, and when it appeared it was found to contain so many 

 things that were not true that the necessary work of revision 

 .and excision reduced its contents fearfully. In these elimina- 

 tions he started in with a free hand, as is shown by comparison 

 with later editions, but soon found that his book was disappear- 

 ing very rapidly, and not much of it would be left, if he did not 

 stay his hand. At this point he seems to have adopted some 

 new rule, unfortunately, either of evidence or of date, probably 

 the latter, for his work discloses the fact that he declined all re- 

 sponsibility for pedigrees as they came to him, of an earlier 

 period than about 1780. Beyond that date nearly all the crude 

 -and impossible things of fiction were allowed to remain and are 

 thus propagated as true, down to our own day. There was one 

 rule, however, adopted very early in the management of this 

 compilation that saved it from degeneracy, and that was the 

 difficulty of getting into it. In all its history, from the begin- 

 ning, it has been a kind of "close corporation," and the animals 

 in the volume of the last year are almost uniformly descended 

 from the animals to be found in the first volume. The applica- 

 tion of this rule, no doubt, worked an injustice in very many cases, 



