SOME EARLY VICTORIAN OWNERS. 



481 



Touchstone, then sire of two Derby winners, drew the top price at 31 guineas 

 and a sovereign for the groom. Gladiator got 25 guineas in this same year of 

 1 846 ; Harkaway had dropped from 30 to 1 2 ; Hetman Plato/ (not yet the sire of 

 Cossack] was only 10, as was John o Ga^mt ; Lanercost and Plenipotentiary were 15. 

 It may well be asked whether the prices of those days, and the moderate fees now 

 asked in America, are not more conducive to getting a number of good horses 

 than such enormous sums as are now demanded on the English Turf. When five 

 and six hundred guineas can be got without advertisement ; when fifty is considered 

 cheap; when a hundred is the average price, it might be imagined that we are 

 sure of plenty of first-rate stock. I fear it only means that fashion has run up the 

 price of certain strains, and that as there are not enough fashionable sires to go 

 round their owners can ask what they please. Like West Australian, The Flying 

 Dutchman was sold to France. It will be worth while to consider the French 

 pedigrees I give in the Appendix, to take them in conjunction with French successes 

 in breeding stayers, and to see whether we are not, after all, limiting our circle 

 too much. One other possibility I have already mentioned; it is that our own 

 blood is improved by 

 transportation to different 

 climates and pastures, 

 and will come back to 

 us reinvigorated, and 

 stronger than what we 

 have kept here. I cannot 

 quote an example of our 

 using a French sire who 

 is descended from stock 

 long bred in England. 

 But in the English de- 

 scendants of such im- 

 ported sires as Carbine 

 we shall soon be able to 



judge the value of Australian limestone to the M^lsket branch of Eclipse ; and it 

 is worth remembering that Lord Glasgow, after a disappointing two-year-old trial, 

 would have shot Musket, had it not been for the entreaties of John Osborne 

 who rode him, and for a firm protest from Tom Dawson, his trainer. So much 

 VOL. III. i) 



" Plenipotentiary '' by " Emiliits " (i 83 1 ). 



