PURE GENERATIONS OF LEXINGTON. 13 



After consideration, it was resolved that the proof adduced 

 against any horse, that he had eight crosses of thorough blood, 

 should disqualify him from running as not thoroughbred ; and, 

 in tliat way, it has come to be a general mode of speech to say 

 that a horse having eight pure crosses on both sides, is thor- 

 oughbred. 



In some cocktail stakes, five pure crosses, on both sides, is a 

 disqualification ; and in many farmers' stakes, three crosses on 

 the two sides, disqualify a horse from starting for such stakes, 

 as not thoroughbred. 



Any of these, however, are far from proving him to le 

 thoroughbred. 



It was a general impression in Yorkshire, in my time, among 

 the horse-breeding, hard-riding, fox-hunting farmers, that a colt 

 got by a thoroughbred horse, out of a dam and grand dam, 

 similarly begotten, was thoroughbred : and I believe that the 

 same opinion largely obtains among the breeders and owners of 

 trotting horses in the United States. At least, I know, that I 

 have heard many animals, positively, declared to be thorough- 

 bred, when the person asserting such to be the case, did not 

 pretend to trace the descent above two or three generations, and 

 that, for the most part, on the sire's side only. 



The only thing which constitutes a horse truly thoroughbred 

 is, that he, either, proves back directly on both sides to oriental 

 sire and oriental dam, or proves back so far, into tlie mist of an- 

 tiquity, that the memory of man goeth not to the contrary. It 

 is one thing to trace Sir Archy to Bustler, who was the son 

 of the Helmsley Turk, in the reign of Charles I., and a mare 

 whose name and origin is unknown. 



But it would be quite another thing to trace him to the son 

 of the Helmsley Turk, and a mare who should be perfectly well- 

 known to be a Flemish dray mare. 



Even should that be the case, however, so many generations 

 have elapsed since Bustler was begotten — not less than fifteen 

 or sixteen, at the least, to the present day — that the effect would 

 be only to show that, as has been already stated, there is unde- 

 niably, at the remotest point to which we can go, an infinitesi- 

 mal drop of some blood other than pure Arab, Barb or Turk, 

 in the veins of the English and American race-horse. 



