3 1 8 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



died a Captain Gamble, who had brought over to Westmeath a mare called 

 Miss Pratt by Blacklock, out of Gadabout by Orville. She was bought at the auction 

 (as Mr. Joseph Osborne has recorded) by Mr. Watts for 120 guineas, and on her 

 arrival at the Curragh she was put to Economist, the sire of Harkaway, with the 

 result of breeding a big, fiddle-headed filly called Echidna. At only three years old 

 (for she was never raced) Echidna was put to Birdcatcher, and the result was The 

 Baron, a dark chestnut with a small star on his forehead, a white spot at the muzzle 

 and the rear hind-foot white. His greatest son Stockwell produced the winners of 

 the Derby of 1864, 1866 and 1873, of the Oaks in 1865, and of the St. Leger 

 in 1860, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1866 and 1867, besides many other winners. Of them all 

 Blair Athol, a chestnut with a white face, has been a prime favourite. His dam was 

 the celebrated Blink Bonny, by Melbourne, out of Queen Mary by Gladiator. 



I have mentioned Economist in speaking of the breeding of Echidna. Like 

 The Colonel, he was a son of Whisker, and therefore brother to Whalebone, and, as the 

 sire of Harkaway, he founded the line which went on with King Tom, whose dam 

 was Pocahontas, dam of Stockwell. Ireland has again a good deal to say in the 

 breeding of Harkaway, for his grandam Miss Tooley was brought to Newry by 

 Mr. Jason Hassard, as the only cargo of the " Lively Nancy," which had sailed for 

 the Liverpool market with a load of bullocks. She won races in 1812 and 1813, 

 and in 1815 Lord Cremorne won the Mares' Plate at the Curragh with her and then 

 sent her to the stud, where she bred a filly to Nabocklish a son of Rugantino who 

 traces back in direct male line to Herod, through Tom Tug. Known only as the 

 Nabocklish mare, this filly was given to Mr. Thomas Ferguson, the crack steeple- 

 chaser, who called her Fanny Dawson (out of compliment to her first owner's family), 

 and in 1 834 she produced Harkaway, who was more of a pale yellow sorrel than a 

 chestnut, with a blaze face and his near fore-foot white to the fetlock. He stood 

 sixteen hands two, and was a horse of great power, especially in his quarters, gallop- 

 ing very wide behind. His excellence has often been thought to be as much 

 due to his being inbred to The Godolphin and to Herod as to the fact that his sire was 

 great-great-grandson of Eclipse in the direct male line. 



The PotSos branch of Eclipse having been thus sketched out, it is time to turn to 

 his other son King Fergus, a chestnut foaled in 1775, out of Creeping Polly by Sir 

 Ralph Gore's famous Othello (1743), a stallion as well known at the Curragh as at 

 Newmarket, and the son of a Tartar mare. Mated with a mare by Herod (out of 

 Pyrrha by Matcheni) King Fergus got the bay Benningbrough (St. Leger, 1794), 

 who produced another bay, Orville out of Evelina by Highflyer. Orville 1 s lungs and 



