TRAINING AND BREEDING. 



435 



Major Brice bred St. Gatien. Sceptre, in fact, they would say, belongs to an 



" outside family," just as Barcaldine, Ormonde, or honomy did, and if the advice of 



these critics had been followed by breeders, the mating which produced Sceptre, 



Ormonde, Barcaldine, St. Galien, and honomy (to name no other instances), would 



not have taken place; the "best breeding" would, in fact, have been limited 



to the descendants of a comparatively few original mares. Even apart from 



such a test of results as this, it does not seem, at first sight, as if the 



limitation in breeding introduced by the " Figure System " were a good thing. 



And though it is with reluctance that I criticise a theory put forward with the 



express and laudable 



desire of benefiting 



English thoroughbred 



stock, I must also say 



that a consideration of 



Sceptres record, and ot 



the facts set forth in 



my eleventh and twelfth 



chapters must weaken 



the faith of some ^ 



racing men in the 



deductions of Mr. 



Bruce Lowe and Mr. 



William Allison, though 



nothing can lessen the 



interest of the facts 



which they have so industriously gathered and presented to the public in their 



famous " Figure System." If these gentlemen are correct, their explanation of the 



excellence of certain families to-day must also be the explanation of the excellence 



of the ancestors of those families fifty or even a hundred years ago. Yet I 



question very much whether the Duke of Grafton, Lord Jersey, or Lord Egremont 



(to quote only from those names Mr. Lowe quoted) ever traced a pedigree back to 



its " tap-root " in the female line ; or, if they did, whether they ever paid more 



attention to female descent than to lineage in tail-male ; or, finally, if they paid 



attention to female descent at all, whether they considered the first dam, or tap-root 



only, without troubling about the rest. It is, of course, a merely mathematical 



"Nutieith'' (1840). 



