XI 1 



PREFACE. 



May, 1800, at Brocket Hall, in Hertfordshire, and the Prince of Wales's colours 

 were successful on a horse called Ploughator, by Tnimpator, a well-known sire of 

 those times. I believe that even the present owner of the estate, Lord Mount- 

 Stephen, might find some difficulty in imagining exactly where that racing of a 

 hundred years ago was held ; and there are few sporting examples to be quoted 

 which give a greater idea of the difference in such matters now. It may be added 

 that His Royal Highness was equally fortunate a month after, with Kttows/ey, at 

 Guildford, where it is just as difficult to conceive of a good course to-day. But it is 

 not only from the fact of a royal victory that this little meeting near Hatfield is worth 

 notice. It was attended by Lord Salisbury, by Lord Melbourne, and by that Lord 



Egremont whose des- 



i 



cendant, Lord Lecon- 

 field, passed away in the 

 first days of the twentieth 

 century, retaining all that 

 celebrity for artistic taste 

 which he inherited from 

 the racing ancestor who 

 filled Petworth with the 

 gems of native and for- 

 eign art. The family is 

 connected also with Mr. 

 Wilfrid Blunt, who mar- 

 ried the granddaughter 

 of Lord Byron, and 

 whose annual sales of Arab stock at Crabbet Park are one of the most interesting 

 and picturesque though hardly the most important functions at which the busy 

 hammer of Mr. Tattersall may be heard at work. Whenever I attend the gathering 

 in those lovely pastures near Three Bridges, on a sunny afternoon in late July, it is 

 an easy dream to be back in the early eighteenth century, even in the seventeenth, 

 looking at those Arab sires which were imported with such difficulty into England, 

 and became the origin of all our thoroughbreds. As a cross with other breeds Mr. 

 Blount's Arabs are of service still, and if the researches of Sir Walter Gilbey prove 

 to be correct, the strong yet handy horse of future warfare will be got from some 

 small hardy native stock by sires of Arab blood. For long distances and hard 



Filly by " Florizel If." out of " Chinfcara." 

 In Mr. BroJrick Cloete't Paddocks, 1901, 



