1773 THE MISTEES 151 



Jockey Club Plates. And a similar remark applies to 

 Curwen's Bay Barb, and other early ' Sons of the 

 Desert,' whose influence, having been transmitted par 

 les femmes, is less conspicuously in evidence, and 

 whose owners and importers might very well have 

 been members of the Jockey Club but for temporal 

 obstacles. We have seen, too, that the Club was not 

 a mere ' Southern ' institution, but that it was com- 

 posed of members from the North and the South, 

 from Ireland and from the West Indies (or having 

 some connection with the West Indies), as if one of 

 the objects kept in view at the foundation of the Club 

 had been to weld together various interests, to promote 

 intercourse, to foster mutual improvement, substi- 

 tuting for the spirit of almost hostility which had 

 formerly prevailed between the horse-racers and horse- 

 breeders of the North and of the South a feeling of 

 reasonable and profitable emulation. Altogether it 

 would seem that the Club, at the time at which it 

 was started, had the elements of an almost ideal 

 representative body, so far as the best interests of the 

 Turf were concerned. 



