18 RACEHORSES IN AUSTRALIA 



pedigree cannot be ascertained)." Her stock, inasmuch as they can win at 

 all distances, at weight-for-age, and can stay, are palpably from no half-bred 

 strain. There was Dinah, bought, it is believed, out of a travelling mob by the 

 late Mr. James Wilson, of Victoria, and certainly as clean bred as Eclipse. 

 Her descendants include, in a long list, Musidora, Newhaven, G'naroo and 

 Briseis. There was Mr. C. Smith's Gipsy, said to have been by Rous' Emigrant, 

 but whose dam was never identified. There was Lilla, whose grand-dam was 

 a mare by Toss, "bred by the Rev. W. Walker, near Bathurst," and there was 

 Sappho herself, "by Marquis, her dam a grey mare by Zohrab, grand-dam a 

 brown mare of unknown pedigree." And then, too, there was Old Betty. 

 Breeders w^ould give untold sums of money to discover, w^ith no possibility of 

 error, the blood lines of these famous mares. It is to be feared, however, that 

 it is an impossibility in each of these cases cited here, and every year that 

 glides past adds to the apparently insurmountable difficulties which lie in the 

 way. But it was to prevent such occurrences in the future that the first 

 volumes of the Victorian, the New South Wales and the New Zealand Stud 

 Books were compiled. Mr. William Levy essayed the task in Victoria in 1 859. 

 in N.S.W. the first production saw daylight at about the same time, and in 

 New Zealand, breeders followed suit. 



Mr. Levy's volume ran to 40 pages, all told. There were one hundred 

 and thirteen mares whose produce he recorded, and of these twenty-eight 

 were owned, or partly owned, by Mr. Hector Norman Simson, of Tatong, 

 near Benalla. 



The second volume of the Victorian Stud Book, also edited by Mr. Levy, 

 was published in 1865, and was even more meagre in its information than its 

 predecessor, but volume three, compiled by William Yuille, junior, in 1871, 

 was a much more ambitious effort, and volume four, the last of the series, was 

 also edited by him. After this the need of an Australian Stud Book, apart 

 from a mere provincial work, was so apparent, that Mr. William C. Yuille, 

 the father of the Editor of the third and fourth Victorian records, and who 

 had, unfortunately, died in the meantime, took over the great task. This 

 first volume represents an emormous amount of work and of research. It is 

 peculiarly interesting to the student of breeding, and is only surpassed in 

 value by the second volume of 1 882, a huge tome for those days, of over five 

 hundred pages, a work which was undertaken by Mr. Archibald Yuille, assisted 

 by his friend Mr. Francis F. Dakin. It was a splendid achievement. There- 

 after, volume after volume was produced at fairly regular intervals, for many 

 years, by these two enthusiastic experts, and after Mr. Dakin's sudden death, 

 in Sydney, by Mr. Archibald Yuille and his brother Albert. In 1913, how- 

 ever, the tenth volume was "compiled and published under the direction of 

 the Australian Jockey Club, and the Victorian Racing Club." It is a great 

 work. The twelfth volume, published in 1919, runs to over nine hundred 

 pages, and the information contained therein is complete and entirely satis- 

 factory. The present Keeper of the Stud Book is Mr. Leslie Rouse, a member 

 of a very old house which has been intimately connected with Australian 

 racing and horse breeding, with all its traditions, ever since the beginning. 

 Nothing has been left undone in order to place the Australian Stud Book on 

 the same high pedestal of completeness and accuracy which distinguishes its 

 great prototype, "The General Stud Book." 



