A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



improved by a cross of Sir Peter, continued to flourish for long in Comas and his 

 progeny, three of whom (in his first season) came in first, second, and third for the 

 St. Leger ; Reveller (out of Rosette], Ranter (out of sister to Rosette), and the 

 Marshal. Of the rest Grey Momus was the most perfect and Humphrey Clinker the 

 biggest, who was the sire of Melbourne out of a Cervantes mare. 



Turnino- for a moment to Matchem' s influence on female lines of descent, we may 

 note that the family which traces, through the dams, to Burton's Barb mare, owes 

 Atalanta to Matchem, and from Atalanta came Whitelock, Don John, Grey Momus, 

 Margrave, and Sheen, with such representatives in modern times as Enigma, Lady 

 Yardley, Headlong, and others. In the same way Matchem was also the sire of Miss 

 West, who was but five removes from the Massey Mare, and from Miss West, in the 

 female line, came such celebrities as Gladiateur, Fille de I' Air, Reinc, Fra Diavolo, 

 and Kirkconnel. 



I have mentioned these instances of female descent because there is no doubt 

 that both Matchem and Herod have now been distanced by Eclipse in the struggle for 

 male supremacy. Mr. W. Allison thinks that Bruce-Lowe's "Figure system" 

 provides a complete reason for this in the fact that neither Matchem nor Herod 

 possessed a single strain of the original mares (viz., the dam of the two True Blues, 

 the Bustler Marc, the Sedbury Royal Marc, the dam of the Brimmer Mare, and the 

 Oldfield Mare] who form the tap-roots of the five " sire families," while Eclipse 

 showed strains from three of them, that of the Sedbury Royal Mare occurring on each 

 side of his pedigree. But I cannot believe that the English Turf has benefited by 

 the lack of Matckeafs descendants in tail-male just because caprice in the matter of 

 fashionable sires has almost extinguished a strain which may perhaps be strengthen- 

 ing itself by the far more lengthy if uncertain process of establishing the female 

 line. Matchem traces back, on the dam's side, to the Layton Barb Mare, the latest 

 of whose descendants are Common and Sir Visto (through the Expectation line), 

 Seabreeze, Rive d'Or, and Sibola, while among its successful stallions are Lamplighter, 

 Lord of the hies, T/ionnanby, and Goldfinch ; and if it be true that Matchem s 

 descendants in tail-male are disappearing all over the world, and not in England 

 only, then it would seem that the excellence of his stock, as long as it lasted, might 

 be due as much to his great ancestress as to the Godolphin Arabian himself. Certain 

 it is, at any rate, that the family of the Lay/on Barb Mare comes fifth in the season of 

 1901, if we arrange the descendants of the original mares in the order indicated by 

 the value of their winnings ; while the third on that list is the family of the Sedbury 



