HORSKS OF THE OLDEN TIME. 403 



produced." Some weight having been attached to tiis opinion, 

 he is induced to repeat this declaration, in thus defining his 

 position. As Brutus said to Cassius, " an older, not a better." 

 " Did /say better ? " Non ego. Observer. 



TO "EPSUS, of ENGLAND. 



The English blood horse was known in Yirginia, our ancient 

 dominion, the mother of States, and of our best race-horses 

 formerly — heretofore considered our " race-horse region " — long 

 before any Stud Book appeared in England, the pursuits of the 

 turf having been introduced to Virginia during the reign of the 

 Stuarts ; but, until within a few years, pedigrees, often lost, de- 

 pended, almost wholly, ujDon the mere certificates of the gen- 

 tlemen of the olden time. Their blood stock originally de- 

 scended from the best of England, the basis of the Yirginia 

 race-horse during the days of the Colonial government ; when 

 " Fearnought was the Godolphin Arabian of Yirginia," though 

 " Jolly Koger had a prior claim to that distinction," with whose 

 name, and that of Janus, many of our thoroughbred pedigrees 

 terminate. " The judicious breeders of the present day, when 

 they have the ancient crosses of Fearnought, Jolly Roger, Mon- 

 key, Othello, Silver Eye, and Morton's Traveller, in their pedi- 

 grees, want no other aid of foreign crosses, to insure speed, 

 bottom, lastingness, and ability to carry heavy weights." 



For near a third of a century succeeding the Revolution that 

 separated the Colonies from Great Britain, the following Eng- 

 lish horses contributed chiefly towards the improvement of the 

 American race-horse — viz., Bedford, Citizen, Clockfast, Dare 

 Devil, Diomed, Gabriel, Medley, Messenger, Saltram, Shark, 

 and Spread Eagle. Other importations during the same period, 

 such as Buzzard, Chance, Clifden, Cormorant, Dragon, Oscar, 

 Precipitate, Sir Harry, Whip, &c., were not equally successful, 

 as stallions, in Yirginia. Diomed, Saltram, Sir Harry, and 

 Spread Eagle, it will be remembered, were Derby winners. 

 Buzzard had the first celebrity on the turf and in the stud in 

 England, especially as the lineal ancestor of Selim, Castrel, 

 Saltram, Bay Middleton, the Queen of Trumps, Flying Dutch- 



