SPORTING AUTHORITIES. 435 



through which during a space of twelve years, is veritably an 

 almost Herculean labor. 



I have, however, done my best to make good the list, to the 

 present day, as regards stallions of recent importation. 



With regard to those of an earlier date, the part I have had 

 to perform is of a widely differentnature. It was to decide which 

 of the horses imported as thoroughbred English horses, previous 

 to the Revolution, and so late, I may say, as to the first ten 

 years of the present century, deserve to be retained as such in 

 a work aiming at authenticity. 



Had I consulted, merely, my own convictions, I should have* 

 at once discarded from the list, given by Skinner and Edgar, of 

 imported stallions, nearly one-third ; either because there is 

 no indication whatever that any such horses ever existed, or 

 because the pedigrees, given with the names, do not agree with 

 the stud-book pedigrees of the real horses, owning those names. 



There is yet another reason for suspicion and care ; which is 

 the doubt whether — the names and pedigrees being correct — the 

 horses themselves ever came to this country ; which, I confess, 

 in several instances appears to me hypothetical. 



I find it stated in the very well- written treatise on the race- 

 horse in America, in Mason's Farrier, that " about the period of 

 time last mentioned, *'. e. 1800, Colonel Hoomes and many others, 

 availing themselves of the passion for racing, inundated Virginia 

 with imported stallions, bought up frequently at low prices in 

 England, having little reputation there, and of less approved 

 blood ; thereby greatly contaminating the tried and approved 

 stocks, which had long and eminently distinguished themselves 

 for their feats on the turf, their services under the saddle, and as 

 valuable cavalry horses during the revolutionary war." 



It would be well if these gentry had done no more than im- 

 port worthless stallions, but there is every reason to believe that 

 they commonly manufactured the most impudently mendacious 

 pedigrees for horses, either not thoroughbred at all, or of the 

 most ordinary and worthless strains of blood. So obviously 

 is this the case, that in going over Edgar's list, whenever a par- 

 ticularly gorgeous pedigree occurs, one at once finds on refer- 

 ence to authorities, that the horse is not so much as named, nor 

 any dam to be discovered, which Q.ov\A])Tdbahly have borne him, 



