260 THE HORSE. 



books be done to a certainty in ninety-nine cases out of a bnn- 

 dred in England, wliereas with us, after a few generations, tlie 

 line is too often lost, left in doubt or dependent on mere rumor, 

 owing to the absence of authentic records. The method which 

 Stonehenge suggests can readily, however, be carried out here, 

 after becoming, through his argument and examples, master of 

 the system ; since, although the individual pedigrees of many, 

 if not most of our horses, are lost before we get to a very re- 

 mote antiquity, the original strains, from which our very best 

 blood is derived, through Sir Archy, Fearnought, Janus, Jolly 

 Roger, and Moreton's Traveller, beside others, are perfectly 

 well known. 



So that it is easy, in selecting stallions from among the mod- 

 ern importations, to go upon whichever system may strike the 

 fancy, that of in or of out-breeding. 



I think, myself, that it is made clear by recent events, and 

 that such is shoM-n to be the case by the tables of racing stock, 

 given at the close of the first volume, that previous to the last 

 quartei- of a century, the American Turfman was probably 

 breeding in too much to the old Virginia and South Carolina 

 ante-revolutionary stock, and that the American race-horse has 

 been improved by the recent cross of modern English blood. 

 It is also well worthy of remark, that every one of the four 

 most successful of modern English stallions in this country, 

 which have most decidedly hit with our old stock Leviathan, 

 Sarpedon, Priam, and Glencoe, all trace back to several crosses 

 of Herod blood, Glencoe, and Priam, not less than three oy four 

 several times each, to crosses of Partner blood, aiul directly 

 several times over to the Godolphin, Barb, or Arabian — which 

 are the very strains from whicli our Virginia stock derives its 

 peculiar excellence. 



It is farther worthy of remark, that two stallions have de- 

 cidedly hit with the imported English mare Eeel, as i)roved by 

 her progeny, Lecomte and Prioress, respectively, to Boston and 

 Sovereign. 



Now Reel, through Glencoe, Catton, Gohanna, and Smolen- 

 sko, has herself no less than seven distinct strains of Ilerod 

 blood. Boston, as every one knows, traces directly, through 

 Timoleon, Sir Archy, Diomed, Florizel, to ilerod. Sovereign, 



