HISTORY OF HORSE-RACING. V 



the dam of The Baron. I happened to be at Jockey Hall on the 

 afternoon that this event took place, and was present with Mr. 

 Watts. The birth wa^'. not an easy one, the foal being large and 

 leggy, with a great fiddle head, the chief characteristic of the 

 Blacklock family. The foal was in fact a monster in more respects 

 than one, but Mr. Watts was not disconcerted at her appearance, 

 but rather the contrary, as it afforded another convincing proof 

 'how like begets like.' Mr. Watts there and then vowed he'd 

 never put a saddle on her back, but keep the big-headed one, 

 whom he named Echidna, to breed from. This promise he 

 sacredly kept, and when three years old, still sticking to the Waxy 

 blood, he put her to Birdcatcher, with the result of breeding The 

 Baron. 



Happily Echidna did not transmit her frightful frontispiece to 

 her first-born son, but nevertheless his head was not handsome, 

 being of the ' Roman ' type, a characteristic he bestowed upon 

 many of his progeny ; but The Baron, who was a dark chestnut 

 with a small star in his forehead, was in every other respect the 

 beau ideal of the English thoroughbred. The Baron's doughty 

 deeds, both on the turf and at the stud, are too well known to 

 require notice here, but I may mention that Mr. Watts continued 

 to mate his dam to the descendants of Waxy and Blacklock with 

 the same good fortune that attended him from the first, as Echidna 

 bred Ellen to Y. Blacklock, The Countess to Birdcatcher, Mar- 

 chioness D'Eu to Magpie, (See. — a fact that ought to convince stud- 

 masters that selection, not chance, should guide them in the mating 

 of their mares. Mr. Watts more than once pointed out to me that 

 the reason of the Blacklock blood ' nicking ' so well with that of 

 Waxy was that the latter was got by the famous PotSos, while 

 there are two close crosses of that Eaton celebrity to be found in 

 the dam of Blacklock. 



No less instructive to stud-masters are the strange chances that 

 led to Harkaway being raised on Irish soil — ahorse whom it is now 

 my intention to show was not only the most iii-bred^ but the grand- 

 est and best ever foaled. Descended on his sire's side from Eclipse 

 through PotSos, Waxy, Whisker, and Economist, Harkaway could 

 also on his dam's side claim alliance with Herod, who in 1777 be- 

 gat Tom Tug, the sire of Commodore, whose son Rugantino (own 

 brother to Irish Escape) was the sire of Nabocklish, who begat 

 Fanny Dawson, the dam of Harkaway. Thus this great horse 

 sprang from the union of the Eclipse and Herod blood, which was 



