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GOLDSxMITII MAID. 



TuE excellent and famous little mare who bears this well- 

 known name was bred by Mr. John B. Decker, of Sussex county, 

 New Jer.-:ey. She was foaled in May 1857, and now at the ripe 

 a<;e of seventeen years, after an immense amount of work and 

 travel, and a very large number of exceedingly fast races, she 

 remains quite sound and full of vigor. Indeed as I looked over 

 her on the ISth of March 1874, at Budd Doble's stables, Point 

 Breeze Park, Philadelphia, I was led to remark that she looked 

 as brisk and young as any of the horses there in training, some 

 of whom are but five years old. This evergreen specimen of the 

 American trotter was got by EdsalPs Ilambletonian, the horse 

 afterwards purchased by Mr. R. A. Alexander, of Kentucky, who 

 called him Abdallah, after his grandsire, the grandson of im- 

 ported Messenger, of world-wide renown. There is in this 

 country a valuable and interesting portrait of Mambrino, the 

 English horse who got Messenger. It was engraved by Stubbs, 

 from a painting of his own, nearly a century ago, and is the 

 property of R. ^Y. Cameron, Esq., of Staten Island, a gentleman 

 of enterprise and rare culture, and a lover of the horse. The 

 dam of Goldsmith Maid was a buckskin mare, formerly owned at 

 Plainfield, New Jersey. She was got by Abdallah ; so the Maid 

 herself is very closely in-bred to the old rat-tailed horse, being 

 by his grandson out of his daughter: besides which there were a 

 great number of in-crosses to the Messenger blood in Abdallah's 

 son Ilambletonian, who is grandsire of Goldsmith Maid. Ilam- 

 bletonian's own dam was the result of an out-cross to the im- 

 ported stallion Bellfounder, but his grandam, One Eye, was chock- 

 full of the Messenger blood, having been by his son Bishop's 

 Ilambletonian (son of the mare Pheasant by imported Shark) out 

 of his daughter Silvcrtail. Pheasant's dam was by imported 

 Medley, a horse of uncommon excellence and fine breeding, by 

 Gimcrack. Bellfounder has been greatly overrated, in my opin- 

 ion. I foriiicrly owned one of his grandsons, a horse got bv 



