INFLUENCE OF AUSTRALIAN RACING 49 



in luxury and ease. Each boy in charge of a horse has, bound on his right 

 arm, a brass badge showing the number of the race on the card in which his 

 horse is entered, and his number on the card. It is an ingenious and simple 

 "dodge," and not one of a costly nature, which we might well make use of 

 in Australia. Of course, whilst standing in their stalls, the names of the com- 

 petitors in this country are blazoned on one of the posts, but whilst parading 

 round the enclosure it would be a very useful adjunct to our arrangements, 

 which we so earnestly desire to see made perfect. 



Another Australian innovation is the "Bruce Lowe Figure System." This, 

 too, has been the motive force of endless ink slinging. But, like the starting 

 gate, it has come to stay. It is extremely simple. For a great number of 

 years in the history of the Turf, breeders, w^ith the exception of a few genuine 

 enthusiasts, paid little attention to the family lines of their mares. They 

 were aware that their stallion was an Eclipse horse, and was by so and so from 

 so and so, but the dam, although a good one, did not trouble them much, on 

 her dam's side, so long as she was clean bred. I remember a discussion w^hich 

 took place long ago, instigated, I think, by the "Sportsman," on "How to 

 Breed a Good Racehorse." I believe, but am not quite sure whether I am 

 right, that it was the late General Peel who promulgated the appallingly simple 

 doctrine to "put a winner of the Oaks to the winner of the Leger, and there 

 you are, don't you know." But of later years, and before Mr. Bruce Lowe 

 had published his "system," men were beginning to waken up to the supreme 

 importance of the dam, and her family, and the revised edition of the first 

 volume of the "General Stud Book" was an incentive to the seekers after 

 truth to persevere in their studies. Bruce Lowe w^as struck with the fact 

 that descendants of certain of the old "Royal " and other mares — the "tap- 

 roots," as he called them — in tail female, of our "Stud Book," were infinitely 

 more successful than the descendants of other tap-root mares. Mr. Bruce 

 Lowe, and his friend, Mr. Frank Reynolds, had noticed the same peculiarity 

 in their Shorthorn herds of cattle, namely, that the produce of certain cows 

 from some particular old original matron of the herd, continued to be superior 

 to the produce of others. And this animal they called No. 1 . Mr. Lowe then 

 went into an exhaustive analysis of the winning families of the British thorough- 

 bred racer, and he took, as a standard of excellence, the winning of the great 

 classic three-year-old events which have been in existence for so many years, 

 and a record of which is easily found and referred to. After tabulating these, 

 and running them all out to the original tap-root mare, he discovered that 

 more Derbies, Legers, and Oaks had been won by the descendants, in tail 

 female, of Tregonwell's Natural Barb mare, than by the offspring, in direct 

 female line, of any other original mare in the "General Stud Book." The 

 same standard placed Burton's Barb mare second, and Dam of the Two 

 True Blues third. There are some fifty of these mares contained in the sacred 

 pages of Volume I., and Bruce Lowe identified them by the figure denoting 

 the place they held in his standard of Derby, Leger, and Oaks wins. Thirty- 

 eight of them are responsible for classic winners, and after No. 38, the re- 

 mainder have been given a figure in an arbitrary manner purely, until Miss 

 Euston is reached, who is No. 50. It is a little peculiar that the last of these 

 mares to figure as the ancestress of a classic winner is Thwaite's Dun mare. 

 No. 38, to whom traces Pot-8-Os (a son of Eclipse), whose own son was 

 Waxy, sire of Whalebone, to whom, in tail male, run all the famous horses of 

 to-day, which come from the Birdcatcher and Touchstone tribes, and they 

 are legion. These are two of the great pillars of the temple of Eclipse, the 

 third and, perhaps, central support, being Blacklock. 



