'The Modern British "Thoroughbred 63 



In spite of all this, the interesting fact remains that St. Simon has never reached the 

 61,391 mark set by Stockwell in 1866, although the cash value of racing prizes, since 

 St. Simon's get came on the turf, are twice what they were in Hermit's time and from 

 three to four times what they were in Stockwell's, for there were no 10,000 races like 

 the Eclipse Stakes or the Jubilee in the days when the big Exeter chestnut was mon- 

 arch of the British Stud. For all that, however, we must admire and approve old bt. 

 Simon for he is, this year, second on the list without a single classic winner, as In 

 1901, Gallinule being ahead of him solely through the victories of Pretty Polly. St. 

 Simon's son, St. Frusquin, is third on the list over r,ioo behind his twenty-three-year- 

 old sire, Florizel II ,being sixth, St. Serf ninth and Persimmon tenth. Now to do St. 

 Simon justice, we must show, as in the case of Stockwell, wherein he differs from other 

 horses : 



1. He is the only sire in history to get five winners of the Oaks as against three 

 for Sir Peter, Sorcerer, King Tom and Melbourne. No other horse ever got four, 

 Touchstone and Stockwell having each one to their credit, which shows clearly that 

 Oaks winners betoken a female-line horse. Touchstone got two premier sires and 

 his son Newminster got three. Stockwell got but one premier (Blair Athol), but he 

 was four times first on the list, twice second (to Adventurer and Lord Clifden), once 

 third and twice fifth. Doncaster was never better than third and that for only one 

 season. 



2. St. Simon is the only stallion to get five winners of the One Thousand Guineas, 

 as against three for Stockwell and Emilius. 



3. He is the only horse in history to head the list of sires without a classic win- 

 ner to his credit. 



So impressed was I with the idea that St. Simon, being out of a King Tom mare, 

 was a female-line horse like his maternal grandsire, that when Mr. E. S. Gardner Jr. 

 wrote me from Paris in August, 1897, about buying a St. Simon horse, I wrote back 

 as follows : "Don't touch a St. Simon horse. He is a female-liner, like Melbourne, 

 King Tom and Sorcerer, none of whom ever got a premier stallion." Right on the 

 back of that old St. Simon "shifted the cut" on them and got Persimmon and St. 

 Frusquin, both of which have since been premiers, besides being the sire of Florizel 

 II, who got the Derby and St. Leger winners of 1901 Volodyovski and Doricles the 

 former being second to Doricles in the Leger. Yet I contend that up to the time I wrote 

 Mr. Gardner, my judgment was correct and fully warranted by "the inexorable logic of 

 events." For a horse that never was second on the list, Bend d'Or makes a mos r t 

 remarkable showing, whose get first appeared in 1884 with some 4,000 to their credit : 



1885 7,061 1891 12,843 1896 5*017 



1886 22,803 1892 17,892 1897 6,104 



1887 7,158 1893 6,711 1898 7,720 



1888 22,635 1894 3,985 1899 4,322 



1889 6,200 1895 13,014 



1890 17,627 Total 161,092 



There were several horses running by Bend d'Or when I was in England, 

 in 1901, but what races they won or what money, I do not know. The above amount 

 given is equal to $781,295 in American money. My belief is that though Kendal and 

 Orme are the only two stallions of Stockwell's male-line to head the list, since Blair 

 Athol ; and that Bend d'Or was never at the top in any year of his life, I must rank 

 Blair Athol as the best son of Stockwell and Bend dOr his next best descendant in 

 male-line. I write this after a mature study of the case, because Bend d'Or is 

 the sire of two premier stallions, Kendal in England in 1897 and Ben Strome in 

 America in 1903, besides being the sire of Ornus, a horse that sold for $200 at auction 

 and has already this year over $60,000 in purses and stakes to the credit of his son 



