230 The American Thoroughbred 



rapid production under skies friendly to equine 

 growth so multiplied the throughbred of America, 

 that by the time of the Civil War there was 

 scarcely a city of importance in the United States 

 where racing of some character was not held, 

 and there was hardly a state which did not 

 have some breeders within its confines. The 

 supremacy of the South, however, had become 

 firmly established, and it has not to this day 

 been shaken. It is a regret to say that, with the 

 wearing out of the lands and the loss of the for- 

 tunes of the old plantation owners of Virginia, 

 both the production of race-horses and the in- 

 dulgence in the sport there fell off. Now there 

 are in existence not more than half a dozen 

 breeding establishments in the entire state where 

 Diomed lived, where Sir Archy, Timoleon, and 

 Boston had birth, and where splendid gendemen 

 conducted the then pastime. 



