WHAT IS A TIlOROrmiBRED ? H 



No breeder would dream of owning a mare, from which to 

 raise thoroughbreds, she not being fonnd in the Stud-Book. 



Nor, owning a thoroughbred mare, would an}^ person stint 

 her to a horse professing to be thoroughbred, which should not 

 be named in the pages of that record. Any horse or mare, 

 warranted to be thoroughbred, and purchased on such guaran- 

 tee, would be returnable, and its price would be recoverable 

 at law, if its name were not in the Stud-Book, or in default there- 

 of, if it could not be proved beyond dispute, to be entitled to 

 place therein. 



No horse or mare in the Stud-Book, as foaled since 1850, could 

 possibly have so little as eight crosses, before the family should 

 become unknown ; because it would, in that case, he Itnown^ 

 foul ; and would, therefore, not have place in the book at all. 



For instance, Lexington, son of Boston, son of Timoleon, son 

 of Sir Archy, son of Diomed, is already the offspring in his own 

 person, at that stage of his pedigree, of four pure crosses ; but 

 Diomed, through his dam, sister to Juno, has twelve pure crosses, 

 before he comes to the thirteenth, the Byerly Turk, by whom 

 his twelfth progenitrix was begotten upon an unknown mare. 



Lexington therefore has, holding Timoleon's American fe- 

 male ancestry to be pure, seventeen pure crosses of blood ; and 

 his foals, of the present season, have eighteen crosses before they 

 reach the oriental blood. This is not a very long, but an aver- 

 age, pedigree. It is therefore idle to speak of stud-book horses, 

 or, in other words, English thoroughbreds, being held to be such, 

 on proof of eight generations, since cold-blood. ^ 



The way in which this misapprehension has occurred, is easy 

 to explain. For regular races, for prizes to be run for by thor- 

 oughbred horses, the age of the animal entered is all that the 

 owner is asked to prove. It is presumed, as a matter of course, 

 that all the horses entered will be thoroughbreds ; but if not, 

 no objection would be made. For, since a thoroughbred horse 

 is believed to be the most complete and finished animal of his 

 kind, any other starting against him does so to his own proper 

 loss and disadvantage, not to that of the field or of the racing 

 community ; and this alike, whether it be an imported Barb, or 

 Arab, a foreign-bred racer, or an animal of inferior blood. 



If an}^ person should think proper to start a hunter, a car- 



