THE POSITION OF THE TURF 13 



this horse was followed home at Epsom by another Aus- 

 tralian six-year-old in Survivor) is a very strong proof in 

 favour of the hardiness of the Australian horses, for it must 

 be remembered that when these events occurred there were 

 not more than a dozen Colonial flat -racers in training in 

 England, against some fifteen hundred English horses who 

 were old enough to take part in Cups and Handicaps. 



Since the above was written The Grafter, an aged 

 Australian horse, has won the City and Suburban of 1900. 



Whether the Australians have bred anything as good as 

 our best I am not in a position to say, simply because their 

 supposed best — such as Carbine was in his running days — 

 have not been pitted against our own, but it seems to me, 

 judging from what has been sent to England, that in 

 Australia soundness must be more studied in breeding 

 than it is here, and that early forcing cannot be so common. 

 So few English flat-racers who begin in public as two-year- 

 olds last on to run as five and six-year-olds, unless they 

 happen to have gone wrong early and to have been thrown 

 up for a couple of years or so. Those horses which keep 

 on running year after year on the flat, like old Herald, are 

 few and far between, whereas the average Australian, so far 

 as we have seen him in this country, appears to be quite 

 sound at six and upwards. 



As regards breeding from Colonial horses, it is early yet 

 to say whether it will be for the general good or not. In my 

 opinion our breed ought to be strengthened by the best 

 Colonial blood, but I should hesitate to put any mare to 

 a Colonial sire, no matter what his home reputation might 

 be, unless both horse and mare strained back to one or 

 more of the same (good) tap roots. I need hardly say that 

 the experiment of putting English mares to Colonial-bred 

 sires is being very widely tried in England just now, but it 

 will be several years before it will be thoroughly established 

 v/hether good or evil will accrue. But the very fact of 

 several Australian sires of high repute in their own country 

 having been brought to England shows that some of our 

 English breeders are alarmed at the existing state of affairs, 

 and are wishful to counteract the weaknesses so prevalent 



