SOCRATES, IRVINGTON AND LELAND. 2.")3 



already attaches to this very noted branch of the Hambletonian 

 family. 



SOCRATES. 



Socrates is a bright bay horse, and seems to have, in some degree, 

 departed from the standard of the Star cross in regard to size and 

 other particulars. He has more of the Duroc than the other elements 

 that make up that cross, and is a tall, rangy-looking horse, of 16 hands 

 in height, and fine proportions. His feet and legs have the appear- 

 ance of having taken strongly after the Star family, and I should say 

 he was cut out for speed as well as true trotting action. He was 

 regarded, in the early part of his career, as very fast, and I have seen 

 a letter from an able and very popular writer, in which he said Soc- 

 rates could trot a mile on a red-hot track without burning his feet. I 

 suppose the heat referred to was most likely that of the imagination, 

 and as all record of such performance is wanting, we are compelled 

 simply to take the horse as a fine specimen of a family that has been 

 at all times noted for the number of its distinguished members, and 

 the lustre of their achievements. He is now twelve years old, and 

 should have given us some proof by this time of his quality on the 

 track and in the stud. 



IRYINGTON ATSTD LELAND. 



These two brothers are of very distinguished breeding, and if any 

 stallion of the Star cross shall prove a successful sire, it would seem 

 that it should be one or both of these. I have not seen either of 

 them, but am assured by gentlemen who have studied horses some- 

 what as I have studied them, that they are really fine horses. Leland 

 has been described to me as one of the finest sons of Hambletonian, 

 and showing much of the form and quality of that great sire. He is 

 owned at the Stony Ford breeding establishment of Charles Back- 

 man. The dam of these two stallions was Imogene, by Seely's Amer- 

 ican Star; second dam Curry Abdallah, by Abdallah; third dam by 

 imp. Bellfounder; fourth dam by Royalist; fifth dam by Hardware, 

 son of imp. Messenger. The great combination of the blood of Mes- 

 senger and Bellfounder, and particularly that of Abdallah, in the com- 

 position of these two stallions, should excite the brightest expectations 

 as to their future greatness as sires in this remarkably well bred 

 family. As yet they are too young to have anything on that score 

 positively known. Irvington was foaled in 1870, and Leland in 1875. 



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