TRAINING AND BREEDING. 



429 



Porter, which have an intimate bearing on the suoject I am just discussing. 

 They were speaking in a year when no such record price for a yearling 

 as the 10,000 guineas paid for Sceptre had been seen. Yet Mr. Musker purchased 

 a filly by St. Simon out of Bonnie Morn for 5,300 guineas, and another by Ladas out 

 of La Flfche for 5,200 guineas; a Persimmon filly (out of Cassimere) was bought by 

 Lord Howard de Walden for 2,300 guineas, and two more of the same sire's produce 

 reached the same figure, which brought the average of the King's famous horse up 

 to 1,672 guineas for five yearlings, a result only beaten by the average of 2,143 

 guineas for four (one of which fetched only forty) shown by his own sire St. Simon. 

 In 1900 it was the 

 Eaton stud which 

 produced such fabulous 

 figures, of which the 

 most extraordinary was 

 perhaps the 5,500 

 guineas paid for 

 Sandflake, in one di- 

 rection, and the 30,420 

 guineas paid for ten 

 of Orme's descendants, 

 in another. It should 

 be added that 1900 

 was not only re- 

 markable for the 

 10,000 guineas, paid 



by Mr. Sievier, for Sceptre by Persimmon out of Ornament. Cupbearer, by Orme out 

 of Kissing Cup, fetched 9,100; Flying Lemur, by Orme out of Vampire, brought 

 5,700 ; and Duke of Westminster only a little less. 



No doubt it was with such figures as these in his mind that John Porter proposed to 

 the assembled Gimcrack Club in December, 1901, that the views he had already pub- 

 lished concerning two-year-old racing deserved careful and immediate consideration. 

 He urged that it would be much better for the animal if two-year-old racing began on 

 June ist instead of March 25th, because the recent reduction in the value of their 

 races between those dates had not proved a sufficient reform. At least the 

 better class of two-year-olds ought to be in some way prevented from racing so 



VOL. II. 3 L 



" Bloomsbury" (1836) by "Mulatto." 



