THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



CHAPTER XII. 



BLOOD MARES. 



" Give my horse to Timon : 

 It foala me straight arid able horses." 



SHAKESPEARE. 



) the Turf enthusiast, stud annals are as rich in 

 information as the Fasti and Athenseus are to 

 the scholar. They tell how Elden " drove Madcap " 

 when she found herself bereaved, and took forcible 

 possession of her foal ; how Cselebs drank at Dan 

 Dawson's poisoned trough, and was only saved by 

 oceans of vinegar ; how Milksop took fright at her 

 foal, and flatly refused to suckle it ; how Young 

 Cyprus was wounded in the Peninsular War, and a 

 Bugle mare mysteriously spirited away from her pad- 

 dock one night for ever and aye ; how Kappa out of 

 Beta was killed by lightning ; how Sir 0. Bunbury 

 sold his grey Diomede colt with a leg growing out 

 <of its chest, to a showman ; how Touch-me-not un- 

 derwent the Csesarean operation after death; how 

 sister to Batteraway had a fire accident ; how Lan- 

 guish was home-sick, and refused to breed under a 

 foreign sky ; how Vesta had her fourteen foals all 

 greys, and Elis's dam was barren for ten out of 

 twenty seasons ; how Mrs. Candour broke her neck 

 out hunting, and Altisidora died, heavy in foal to 

 Blacklock, as she struggled to get out of the ditch ; 

 how Speed always made a point of killing her foals, 

 while a Tuft mare could never rear one to live ; how 



