GREAT AUSTRALIAN HORSES 31 



foal is in no better case. He looks wretched. Mare and foal, and the embryo 

 in utero, have received such a check that they will never make up the ground 

 they have lost. It is a handicap on their backs for the rest of their lives. So 

 you have practically lost two seasons w^ith your two best mares, and have 

 paid a couple of hundred guineas for the experience. I have a grievance 

 against very many stallion masters over this bone which I am endeavouring to 

 pick with them, and I bring it forward here in an earnest endeavour to draw the 

 attention of owners to the matter. Many of them are vmaware of the facts 

 of the case, and the sooner they learn them the better. In this ideal country 

 of ours we ought to be able to breed the best racehorses in the whole wide 

 world, and we should certainly be able to rear our own sires, with the assistance 

 of occasional infusions of English blood. Search the columns of the weekly 

 sporting press and scan the advertisements of "Sires of the Season." In one 

 paper I see close on eighty blood stallions advertised. With the exception 

 of about half a dozen these are all imported. In another .publication there are 

 seventy, and the same proportion of country breds stands to the imported stuff. 

 And yet, what strains we have owned in the days that have gone by! Sound, 

 stout, masculine, running strains. But they have run out, and they are vanished 

 away. And it must be confessed with the deepest regret that a great number 

 of the army of blood sires which v^e have been importing for the last twenty 

 years are not sound; are not stout, are the reverse of masculine, although they 

 do possess some of the greatest running blood in all the earth. My own 

 deliberate opinion is that, for a decade, at least, we should drop this 

 extravagant importation, put our own house in better order, and show the 

 world once more what we can do in the way of producing our own sound, 

 stout, fleet and staying, high-couraged but sensible Australian horse. 



Chapter XII. 



Great Australian Horses. 



The Barb v. Carbine. 



For we did produce, once upon a time, animals fit to take their places 

 in the ranks against the greatest that the world could bring. Although the 

 Hon. James White failed in his patriotic invasion, many individual racers 

 reached the shores of Great Britain and showed the racing world what we 

 are really capable of. 



To begin with, there was Merman. This horse was bred by Mr. 

 W. R. Wilson when his St. Albans Stud was in the zenith of its fortunes. He 

 was a chestnut colt, foaled in 1 892, by Grand Flaneur, who, great horse as he 

 himself was, was not an unqualified success at the stud, from Seaweed, by 

 Coltness cut of Surf (imported). He showed some fair form in Australia, 

 winning a couple of two-year-old handicaps in his first season out of half a 

 dozen starts; the July Handicap, at a mile, in nine attempts as a three-year-old, 

 and the Armadale Handicap, one mile, the Rosstown Plate, 5^ furlongs, the 

 Yan Yean Stakes, a mile, and the Williamstown Cup, one mile and three 

 furlongs, out of seven efforts, as a four-year-old. That erudite judge, Mr. 

 William Allison, then purchased him on behalf of Mrs. Langtry, and in 

 England he proved himself a stayer of the very first water by winning the 

 Ascot Gold Cup, 2 J miles, the Cesarewitch, 2i miles, the Goodwood Cup and 



