202 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



amount, during a much shorter career. Orvile's fee 

 was as low as ten guineas, but he was still worth 

 1,000 guineas a-year to Mr. Kirby during the four 

 seasons he had him; and although in the course of 

 eighty-seven years he has never treated himself to such 

 an honour, that Father of the Yorkshire Turf laid out 

 nearly 300 in having his favourite's picture taken 

 and engraved. His Lanercost might, like Orvile, he 

 said to have " received all Yorkshire" at his pad- 

 docks; and it was perhaps owing to this cause that he 

 could not hold the place he won in 1847, with Van 

 Tromp, War Eagle, and Ellerdale. In the spring of 

 the preceding year Mr. Kirby had been sadly teazed 

 by the foreigners and their English agents to part 

 with him for 3,000 guineas, the sum at which he 

 had bought him at Newcastle, " stripped of every- 

 thing but his shoes not even the halter in ;" but he 

 stoutly refused to let him go under 4,000 guineas, 

 and cleared 1,600 by him in 1847 alone. Six or 

 seven years after, he was sold, when barely eighteen, 

 with Hernandez and a couple of mares and a foal, 

 as make-weights, for 1,500 the lot ! The earnings 

 of Melbourne, after Canezou made him the rage, 

 were also something very enormous ; and there must 

 be at least a dozen sires on the stud-list at present 

 which are bringing in 600 a year and upwards to 

 their owners. We have only heard of one stud 

 horse being under suspicion of late years, as a coun- 

 terfeit ; and we believe that his owner had a hint 

 given him, which answered its purpose. The trainer 

 of the real Simon Pure, who was averred to have 

 been thrown overboard in a storm in the German 

 Ocean, looked him over, and said that the resem- 

 blance was very remarkable, but that one mark was 

 about two inches too low. 



When we find a little horse like Abd-el Kader, 

 whose dam worked in a fast Shrewsbury coach, and a 

 cast-off of Lord Exeter's, doing the four miles and 



