COCK-TAILS. 67 



preparation. Secondly, what are called half-bred 

 stakes, some of which are very good, have been the 

 cause of a great many frauds being committed, by 

 bringing horses to run for them under false pedi- 

 grees, which will ever be the case, from the great 

 difficulty of proving a horse to be thorough-bred, 

 whose dam may have been purchased by accident, 

 or in some clandestine way, and still perhaps of 

 pure racing blood. Again, as there is no scale by 

 which the degree of impure blood, which qualifies 

 a horse for these stakes, can be measured, the 

 breeder of the cock-tail, of course, avails himself of 

 the parent stock in which the slightest possible 

 stain can be shown, which indeed has been at- 

 tempted to be show^n in some of the best race- 

 horses of later times. In this case, an animal is 

 produced against which no half-bred horse, in the 

 proper acceptation of the term, has a chance, and 

 he sweeps the country of all the good stakes ; and 

 some such horses (Habberley, for example) have 

 proved themselves superior to many of the thorough- 

 bred racers of their year. But the breeding of 

 horses for these stakes is any thing but beneficial 

 to the country, the great object of racing. It 

 encourages a spurious race of animals, often pos- 

 sessing the faults of the blood-horse without the 

 strength and activity of the hunter, and it was for 

 the latter description of horse that this stake w^as 

 first intended. Bona fide hunters' stakes would be 

 advantageous, if open to all horses bringing certifi- 

 cates of their having been regularly hunted through- 

 out a season, but not merelv ridden bv a bov to 



