41 6 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



quence of the whole system of breeding being altered." The observation is as sound 

 as it was sagacious. When it was made, and to a large extent for the next quarter 

 of a century, nine-tenths of the yearlings registered in the Stud Book were bred for 

 sale instead of for their owners to race. The large prices offered revolutionised 

 the methods of stud sales. Breeders put their names to any stallions without so 

 much considering the propriety of the union as the possibility of its fruitfulness. 

 Nature has now and then taken an appropriate revenge by awarding the best stakes 

 to private owners of comparatively small stud farms who bred and raced their own 

 stock. But one inevitable result has been the enormously increased production of 

 a racing-machine, who, if he were not fast for a few furlongs under a light 

 weight, was utterly worthless for everything else, and was very often not given the 

 chance of proving whether he was a stayer or not. The utilitarian point of view 

 embodied in the last sentence was that which was upheld before the same Committee 

 of the Lords in 1873 by the Earl of Stradbroke. "There are not four horses in 

 England now," said this witness, " that could run over the Beacon Course in their 

 eight minutes, which in my younger days I used to see frequently done." But what 

 could be expected if, as actually happened in the year this evidence was given, one man 

 was able to land no less than ^80,000 in bets on a single short race? Was it likely 

 that owners who preferred money to stamina would bother about long races 

 and the numerous and costly preliminaries they involved? The five-furlong scurry 

 just suited them. Their two-year-olds began to make something more than their 

 corn-bill with satisfactory rapidity. The change from the days of Eclipse could 

 hardly be more clearly emphasised ; for that great horse had nothing taken out of 

 him till maturity, and never raced at all till after he was five. This has been 

 suggested as one reason for the extraordinary vigour of his blood, and the influence 

 it still exerts on every descendant who can boast any large proportion of 

 it in his veins. But this does not mean that no better horse than Eclipse 

 or Flying Childers has been ever bred. To come no nearer to the present 

 day than Blue Gown or Blair At ho/, Roticritcian or Cremorne, or Harkaway, 

 I think it will hardly be challenged that the usual cry of the degeneracy 

 of horses has no more basis now than it had in their times, or than it had a 

 hundred years ago ; and that, in fact, just as we long ago improved both the 

 imported Arab and the native breed, so we have gone on steadily improving 

 the produce of them both, sometimes by fortuitous circumstances, sometimes 

 by careful choice in mating, but always by continued racing from generation to 



