INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 449 



of the universal mendacity on this subject. The preacher wrote 

 a great book called "The Perfect Horse" in which he maintained 

 that the Morgan Horse was thoroughbred. The lawyer wrote 

 another great book on "The American Roadster" in which he 

 maintained that Dexter was a thoroughbred. With two gentle- 

 men of intelligence and education writing such miserable stuff, 

 what are we to expect from the masses? 



Now here is the horse American Eclipse, the greatest horse of 

 his day in his racing achievements, that in his blood is very far 

 from being "thoroughbred," under any rule that has ever been 

 suggested or devised. Now, with this taint on his escutcheon, 

 it follows that no one of his descendants for at least five genera- 

 tions can be classed as thoroughbred. As a progenitor, Eclipse 

 cannot be considered a great horse, either in his immediate or 

 more remote descendants. Medoc was about his best, and he was 

 better than his sire. Another son, called Monmouth Eclipse, was 

 grandly bred on the side of his dam, was sold, it was said, for 

 fifteen thousand dollars for stock purposes, and proved a most 

 lamentable failure, never having got a colt that was worth fifteen 

 dollars as a race horse. The great fame of American Eclipse, 

 therefore, rested upon what were then designated as "his mighty 

 achievements upon the turf." A reasonably complete history of 

 this horse may be found in Wallace's Monthly for March, 1877, 

 p. 160. His great race against Henry, in which he represented 

 the North as against the South, was doubtless the most memora- 

 ble turf event that ever took place on this continent, and a very 

 brilliant description of it will be found at the reference given 

 above. This race of four-mile heats took place on the Union 

 Course, Long Island, May, 1823, for twenty thousand dollars a 

 side, and it was, in effect, Eclipse against the world. Eclipse, 

 fit or not fit, must start, while his opponents had several prepared 

 to start against him and all they had to determine was to select 

 the fastest and best of the whole party. At the last hour Henry 

 was chosen as the champion of the South, and he won the first 

 heat by about a length in 7:37|. A change was made in the 

 rider of Eclipse and he won the second heat by about two lengths 

 in 7:49. In the third heat the instructions to the rider of Henry 

 were not to hurry the gait, but to trail to near the finish and 

 then pull out and win in a rush. The rider of Eclipse under- 

 stood the tactics of the enemy and he hurried the pace every step 

 of the way, in order to tire out his younger opponent. When 



