WHAT IS BLOOD? lY 



"Which one may render — freely, but to the point — 



The brave begotten are by the brave and good. 

 There is in steers', there is in horses' blood, 

 The virtue of their sires. No timid dove 

 Springs from the coupled eagles' furious love. 



And to this day the stanza is the breeder's rule. So much so, 

 that when a real turfman is informed that Timoleon, the son of 

 Sir Archy, had for his great great grandsire a common cart- 

 stallion, named Fallow, he merely shrugs up his shoulders, well 

 satisfied that there must be an absurd error somewhere, although 

 he may not be able to account for the way in which it has arisen. 

 It is enough, that no owner of a full-blooded mare by Driver, 

 dam by V^ampire, &c., would have dreamed of putting her to a 

 cart-horse ; and much more, that, if he had been so abject an 

 ass, Timoleon, a three-parts-bred, could never himself have 

 stayed the distance, much less have got generation after generation 

 of the best and stanchest horses in the world. 



The result and end of all this inquiry and disquisition brings 

 us to the inevitable conclusion that, although, in some cases, 

 even in the best families, all the links may not be distinctly 

 traceable, the English horse known as thoroughbred is virtually 

 of pure Barb, Arab, and Turkish descent, in nine hundred and 

 ninety-nine parts out of a thousand of his blood, his physical 

 conformation, and his hereditary moral qualities, if I may use 

 such a term, of courage, spirit, endurance, and determined will ; 

 and that the American thoroughbred is directly descended in 

 the same, or more than the same, proportions from the English 

 thoroughbred. 



In England, although, when mention is made of ^j'wre blood, 

 thorough blood of the Oriental strain, as opposed to what is 

 generally known as cold blood, is intended, it is universally 

 conceded that there are many other bloods — meaning, by bloods, 

 distinct families or races capable of transmitting their own type 

 and qualities, undeteriorated, by a continual process of in-breed- 

 ing — which have been preserved up to this day, and still exist, 

 as pure — if by tJie word pure we imply unmixed with any other 

 blood — as that of the highest form of racer. Of these distinct 

 families, the most remarkable is the gigantic dray-horse, used 

 Vol. II.— 2 



