436 A HISTORF OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



axiom that our modern pedigrees are far more complicated than those which 

 had to be considered by breeders in 1 790, and from the multiplicity of branches in 

 the family tree of every racehorse on the Turf to-day, I should imagine that a 

 skilful calculator might either establish or refute any theory presented to him that 

 was based on mares alone. If he studied descent in tail-male alone, however, he 

 would find it impossible to deny that the stock of Eclipse (or of the Darhy Arabian} 

 had immeasurably outlasted those of his two great rivals in the male lines. But the 

 difficulty of concentrating all the virtues of high descent upon the first dam may 

 be seen not merely in such an involved pedigree as that of Minting, but in the 

 comparatively simple breeding of a horse of 1789 like Whiskey, who has a dozen 

 different Eastern ancestresses, or Whalebone (1807), who was bred by the Duke of 

 Grafton, not so much, if Mr. Bruce Lowe and Mr. Allison be correct, for the sake of 

 the Eclipse descent of Waxy, with both Herod and Snap blood returned by Penelope, 

 as for the sake of one particular matron who was picked out of ten Royal mares, six 

 unknown mares, four strains of Tregonwell's Natural Barb Mare, four of the Layton Barb 

 Mare, three of the Old Vintner Mare, and one each from the Byerly Turk Bustler Marc, 

 Thwaitcs' Dun Mare, Old Woodcock, the Old Pied Mare, and a Godolphin Mare. 



Are we to believe that the Duke was simply trying (in all these alternatives) to 

 get from the blood of TregoawelFs Natural Barb Mare those qualities which he would 

 have noticed (on the same hypothesis) that her blood had conferred on Goldfinder, 

 Woodpecker, Rhadamanthus, Dccdalus, Waxy Pope, and Scud? Was that his real 

 reason for mating Matchents great-granddaughter with Eclipse's son ? I fancy that 

 in the more than a hundred years which had elapsed since the death of the famous 

 Barb matron, His Grace had seen other causes at work which weighed more seriously 

 with him than her personality ; and, if so, how much more complicated had those 

 causes become in those other descendants of hers in the female line, The Lambkin, 

 Ladas, Canterbury Pilgrim, or Chelandryt Or take the case of Sceptre's sire, Per- 

 simmon, in order to reverse the process of argument for a moment. Of the thirty-two 

 strains of original mares to which he can be traced, twelve are the Burton Barb A fare, 

 seven are " Royal Mares," four are the Trcoonwell Natural Barb Mare, two from the 

 Byerly Turk Bustler Mare. Yet Mr. Allison attributes his excellence to none of these, 

 but to D' Arcy' s Blacklegoed Royal Mare, because, though he inherits but a single strain 

 of her, yet she is his "first dam," or "tap-root." Even taking the order in which 

 Mr. Lowe and Mr. Allison arrange the value of their original matrons, we find 

 that of the originals to which Persimmon can be traced the Burton Barb Marc 



