436 THE HOKSE. 



in tlie English stud-books. Thus we have no less than fourteen 

 horses, not mentioned in any book of authority, recorded as de- 

 scended from Greyhound, Croft's Partner, Brimmer, Makeless, 

 Plaice's White Turk, Dodworth, Layton's violet Barb mare, and 

 about as many more, with the variation of Dicky Pearson, son 

 of Dodworth, and Burton's Bay Barb mare. Lastly, we 

 have one horse, got by the Darley Arabian, dam by the Byerly 

 Turk — g. d. by the Lyster Turk, out of a natural Arab mare. 

 A pedigree, of which it will be enough to say, that it has 

 scarcely a parallel, if it have a parallel in the world, an animal 

 ■going in three generations without a single English-bred sire to 

 natural Arab on both sides, at so recent a date in the history of 

 the turf, as 1718. 



It is needless, perhaps, to say, that there is not the smallest 

 reason to believe that any such horses as any of the above, so 

 bred, and so imported, ever existed. 



Importers of thoroughbreds at this period, appear to have 

 caught up the above pedigrees, as approved ; perhaps from the 

 instance of Morton's Traveller, who did run back directly to the 

 strain first described ; and to have applied them at once to every 

 animal they brought to the country, considering it sufficient to 

 guarantee the descent by their own signatures, which one need 

 not state, are utterly worthless, except as waste paper, when not 

 corroborated by real evidence. 



On consideration, however, I judged it the better way to pre- 

 serve, in my list of these importations, all the hypothetical or 

 apocryphal horses alluded to above ; annexing to their names 

 foot notes signed with my own initials, explanatory of the degree 

 of credit, attaching to each of the pedigrees on actual evidence. 



Beside this class of animals, which may be, I think with pro- 

 priety wholly set aside, so far as the idea is concerned of their 

 having transmitted, to the American racer of the present day, any 

 tincture of the blood ignorantly or fraudulently ascribed to them, 

 there is another which must be viewed very diflferently. 



This class consists of horses, which certainly toere imported ; 

 and which as certainly were of thorough blood, and of good 

 thorough blood also ; but in whose pedigree by accident, negli- 

 gence, or want of consideration for the value of accurate details, 

 a link or two have been lost. Much difficulty has arisen from 



