PREFACE. 



XXIII 



estimated by the difference in the fees charged at the other, we have evidently 

 reached a crucial period in the history of the Turf. Whether that argument holds 

 good will become clearer as I try to develop a few of its many interesting pa<M s. 

 But it is obvious at any rate that the causes which are at work to produce such 

 astonishing results will be well worthy of investigation at the present moment ; and 

 it is in this belief that I have ventured to trace the origins of the Knglish thorough- 

 bred as far back as I can find authority to guide me. 



It is not my desire to weary my readers with useless preliminary researches ; but 

 if I were to begin at once with the first race of which definite details are recorded in 

 the eighteenth century there would be hardly any use in calling this book a History 



of the Turf at all. It 

 is to Mr. John Orton, 

 a yorkshireman of the 

 middle of the nineteenth 

 century, that we owe 

 the preservation of the 

 fact that on Tuesday, 

 September 13th, 1/09, 

 a Gold Cup (value ,50), 

 for six-year-old hor>< s 

 at twelve; stone, was 

 raced for, in three heals 

 of four miles each, over 

 Cliflon and Rawclifle 

 Ings, and was won by 

 Mr. Melcalfe's b.h. Wart. The organisalion and arrangemenls revealed in this 

 presuppose a large number of similar encounters since those far-off days 

 when Severus Alexander had a slud at Nelherby ; and I shall endeavour to 

 suggest a few of the more lypical of the intervening facts, not merely to explain 

 the gradual development of the animals themselves, but to suggest ihe slow 

 and certain spread, from Tyne to Thames and back again, of a spirit of emu- 

 lation among owners, and of sporling insiincls among their friends, which make up 

 the warp and woof of that variegated lapestry we call the Knglish Turf. Here and 

 there a thread is wanting. But the shuttle flew merrily to and fro for several 

 centuries before a pattern so distinct as that observable in 1709 could be distin- 



L'ult by " St. Simyn '' out of " Azeeza." 

 Saittlringkam, 1901. 



