304 THE ENGLISH TURF 



Rosebery's first Derby winner was a beautiful horse, and one 

 of the finest movers that the last two decades have produced. 

 He was a more elegantly turned and showier horse than his 

 sire, and undoubtedly was the possessor of more " quality." 

 Indeed, as regards this somewhat mysterious attribute of the 

 thoroughbred, he was quite an exceptional horse ; and I 

 think that if the Derby winners of the last twenty years 

 were to be judged as to which had the most " quality," a 

 unanimous vote would go to Ladas. At the same time I 

 always thought that Lord Rosebery's son of Hampton had 

 pasterns that were rather weak and too short, and, like so 

 many of our best modern racehorses, he remained but a 

 couple of seasons in training. Ayrshire, to my thinking, if 

 not quite so brilliant, was a harder horse than Ladas, and 

 he won an enormous sum of money when in training. At 

 the stud, as I have already suggested, he is doing very well, 

 and though he has not yet sired a really great horse, he has 

 had far more than the average amount of winners. Thus in 

 1897 he was third in the list of winning sires, the two who 

 beat him being Kendal and St. Simon, but while Kendal's 

 stock won twenty-three and St. Simon's twenty races, sons 

 and daughters of Ayrshire made up a total of thirty-four 

 wins. He has since that time sired a winner of the Oaks, 

 Airs and Graces. 



Before Ayrshire began to be talked of at the stud. Royal 

 Hampton had already done a good deal towards carrying on 

 the line of Hampton. This horse was foaled in 1882, and he 

 has sired a Two Thousand Guineas winner — though not a 

 very good one — in Kirkconnel, and a far better horse in 

 Marcion, who won the Ascot Cup in 1893 ^"^ is already 

 beginning to be heard of at the stud. Another of Hampton's 

 best sons was Sheen, who holds the record as the highest- 

 weighted winner of the Csesarewitch. He is a stud success, 

 most of his stock inheriting the stamina of their sire. Sheen 

 was Hampton's best long-distance runner, but he was not at 

 his best until five years old, when he put on record three 

 extraordinary performances under very heavy weights. One 

 of these was his winning the Caesarewitch with gst. 2lbs. in 

 the saddle ; the other victories were gained in the races for 



