ANNALS OF THE TURF. 301 



feats on the turf, their services under the saddle, and as vakiable 

 cavalry horses during the revolutionary war. In recommending 

 renewed efforts to the Virginians, for the further improvement and 

 preservation of their stock of blood horses, the necessity and im- 

 portance of the immediate publication of a Stud Book (and of a 

 Racing Calendar hereafter) cannot be overlooked. 



It is the wish of the writer, that the tendency of this, and the fol- 

 lowing pages, may excite a spirit and a desire for such a work, by 

 showing that there are valuable materials extant, only requiring 

 diligence and zeal to bring them to light, capable of being made up 

 into a valuable publication on this subject. The want of such a 

 work as a Stud Book, is now lamentably seen and felt in Virginia, 

 where few pedigrees of any particular stock can be traced far back, 

 before they are lost in the mazes of uncertainty and conjecture. It 

 may safely be asserted that the stock of horses in Virginia never 

 can arrive to that degree of improvement and perfection, and more 

 particularly high value as to price, they otherwise would do, unless 

 a record of this kind is published and preserved, to be resorted to 

 for a correct knowledge of their blood. In breeding for the turf 

 and selling turf horses, blood is every thing ; as it has been found 

 that particular strains or pedigrees of horses of this class, are re- 

 markable for their speed and bottom, while others are miserably 

 defective in these essential qualities of the race horse. A Stud 

 Book and Racing Calendar will be a standing record, always ena- 

 bling us to avoid the bad, and to cherish those particular strains of 

 horses, that have established their good qualities for the turf. How 

 has Virginia been injured in her racing stock by some particular 

 stallions, bred in that state ? Potomac, for instance, who, although 

 they raced it well, yet being badly bred, propagated an inferior race 

 of horses. 



Let me therefore, emphatically remind the breeder of the i*ace 

 horse to use great particularity and caution as to the stallions from 

 which he breeds ; examine well into their pedigrees, and to the 

 qualities of the stock from which they are descended ; as an expe- 

 rience of more than a century in England has pro\''en the fact, that 

 where a stallion has been stained with an inferior or " dunghill" 

 cross, however remote in his pedigree, it is certain to lurk out and 

 exhibit itself in his progeny, no matter how well he may have raced 

 it himself. 



We should breed back as much as possible upon the good old 

 stocks of Jolly Roger, Janus, Morton's Traveller, Fearnought, and 

 Medley, of which I propose to give a particular account in the suc- 

 ceeding pages. It has been well for us that the importation of 

 stallions from England has long since ceased, and I hope never to 

 see it revived again. The sod of the Beacon course (four miles and 

 upwards) is now too little trod by the English race horse : short 

 faces with light weights are now too common^ the consequences 

 are, that their stock of blood horses are rapidly losing that stamina 

 and inherent goodness of constitution or stoutness, which enabled 

 them in former days to carry high weights, and to support frequent 

 and hard running. Fifteen or twenty years ago, the Virgmiana 

 bred altogether from imported English stallions, and at that time 



