Sir Tatton Sykes. 227 



not quite please him, as " they are like the old horse's, 

 a trifle the wrong way up." 



Nearly every great sire of England has left some 

 mark by proxy at Sledmere, on a Comus or Camillus 

 foundation. Whalebone made his with Stumps, the 

 first that Sir Tatton ever bought, Sultan with Hamp- 

 ton, Pantaloon with Sleight-of-Hand and The Libel, 

 Defence with Pyrrhus, Touchstone with Rifleman, Bay 

 Middleton with Andover, Venison with Fernhill, Emi- 

 lius with Mathematician, Birdcatcher with Daniel and 

 Womersley, Lanercost with Colsterdale, and Black- 

 lock, whose sire Whitelock was owned by Sir Mark, 

 with his great-grandson Fandango. Sir Tatton sold 

 a few draught mares, with Wicket among them, to the 

 Rawcliffe stud, when it began operations, and it was 

 well for it that he did not like Newminster's slow 

 paces, and declined him ; though he did homage to 

 his after-prowess by going out of his course to buy 

 one of his fillies. There were, we believe, about 120 

 brood mares, but several were not put to, and what 

 with other casualties, about 66 foals was the largest 

 return to Weatherby. How Snarry knew them all so 

 accurately, and talked like a book of their breed (and 

 always in italics when they were of " the Darling or 

 Daniel sort"), puzzled wiser heads than ours: Amati's 

 dam was the queen in point of success, cross her as 

 you might, as Gorsehill and Elcho followed " the 

 fiddle-maker; and she had a chesnut, Marquis of 

 Bowmont by " Daniel," almost as elegant a little 

 fellow as Elcho, whose skeleton has been preserved as 

 a model by the Royal Veterinary College. In fact, 

 we scarcely remember an.pdd-looking horse at Sled- 

 mere, except one of the 170 Daniels, and he seemed 

 to have strained back to a Flemish stock. It was a 

 puzzle why The Libel (the maternal grandsire of St. 

 Albans) should ever have been there, as he was so far 

 above the fifteen-two standard, but he was bought 

 without being seen, and then scarcely used. Mathe- 



Q 2 



