00 



CHAPTER V. 



HALF-BRED HORSES. 



Half-bred — Its Meaning in Racing Phraseology — Ji'" Mason's Lottery— The Colonel, winner of the Liverpool Grand National, 

 Pedigree of — Half-bred Hunter Stallions Esteemed in France — Fair Nell— Portrait of — Abbas Pacha's Challenge — Cairo 

 Merchants and Haleem Pacha — The Race — The Produce of Thorough-bred Sires and Cart Mares — No Longer in Fashion — 

 — Trotting Stallions of Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire— Originated in Lincolnshire — Merits, Action, and Pace — 

 Description of Trotters in 1760— Marshland Shales — Description of and Portrait, 1825— Lavengro's Account of — A Norfolk 

 Fair — Market Weighton Famous for Trotters — Their Pace — Their Form— Their Colours — Recent Exportation to India — 

 Largely used in Normandy — General Fleury on Norman Mares — Shepherd Knapp an American Trotter — A Thorough-bred 

 Trotter^Evidence as to Norfolk Trotters before Lords Committee — Mr. Phillips, of Knightsbridge — The Earl of Charlemont 

 — A Yorkshire Horse-Leader — Trotting Horse Stud Book — The Earl of Rosebery's Committee — The Cause of Decline — 

 Unprofitable Sales — Yorkshire Evidence on Cost of Breeding — Prices Rising, and Breeding beginning again — Mr. Edmund 

 Tattersall's Evidence — Mr. Thomas Parrington, Secretary of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society — Mannington's Evidence on 

 Unsound Thorough-bred Stallions — Propositions for Improving Quality of Horses — The French Plan Rejected — Private 

 Enterprise the only Safe Resource — Plan Suggested by Author — The Deterioration of the British Horse — The Remedy — 

 Good Mares and Sires — Colonel Price, R.H.A., Colonel Baker, and General Peel — Irish Horses — The Irish and Yorkshire 

 passion for Horses compared. 



Half-bred, designated in reports of races by the letters "H.B.," does not mean what the words 

 would imply in their literal sense — the produce of thoroughbred on one side and cart blood on 

 the other — but only that there is some stain in the traceable pedigree, which may indeed be so 

 remote as not to be detected by any external sign. 



For instance. Lottery, the famous steeplechase horse whose name thirty years ago was 

 associated with the many triumphs of Jim Mason, the most elegant, if not the best, cross-country 

 jockey of that day (they figure together in Herring's portrait picture of steeplechase cracks), was 

 a racehorse to look at all over, but, in racing parlance, half-bred. To come to more recent times, 

 the Colonel won the great handicap cross-country race, the Liverpool Grand National, in 1869, 

 and again in 1870. The Colonel, foaled in 1863, was by Knight of Kars out of Boadicea, by 

 Faugh-a-Ballagh — Boadicea by Baronet, out of Princess of Wales ; Princess of Wales out of 

 Modesty, by Pill-Garlic; Modesty, foaled in 1827, was a half-bred mare by Sancho. This slight stain 

 (for Modesty was no doubt a good mare), in spite of the Colonel's splendid symmetry and admirable 

 performances, disqualified him from being enrolled in the British Libro d'Oro, the " Stud Book," 

 and from taking his place and fixing his price with thoroughbred stallions of inferior external 

 form, and of inferior performances, but unblemished pedigree. Breeders for racing purposes always 

 fear that the alloy will come out at a pinch ; therefore, in this country, sires not thoroughbred in 

 blood but thoroughbred in appearance never take a high rank. 



The Colonel was sold a year before the Franco-German War to M. Cavaliero, for ;^2,6oo, and 

 after running once more in England, passed into the stud of the Emperor of Germany. 



On the Continent this class of sire, when showing much substance, is greatly esteemed. 

 In answer to inquiries addressed by a commission appointed to investigate the condition of 

 horse-breeding in the twenty-five circles into which France is divided, more than half applied for 

 English "hunter" stallions. 



