THE BRUCE LOWE SYSTEM OF BREED- 

 ING B T FIGURES 



Some time along in May, 1890, I was the guest of the late Frank Reynolds, of 

 Tocal, on the Paterson river in New South Wales. In the course of an after-dinner 

 conversation, Mr. Reynolds said to me : 



"You have met Bruce Lowe, I presume." 



I replied in the affirmative. Mr. Reynolds then went on to say. "He and I 

 were boys together and the friendship that began then has stood the test for forty 

 odd years. He called on me the last time I was in Sydney and told me he was gath- 

 ering the material for a book on breeding. And you know Lowe is an ingenious 

 chap in his -own way. You Americans give a number to each of your trotting stal- 

 lions and Lowe has conceived the idea of reversing that proposition and numbering the 

 mares." 



"What. All the mares in the British Stud Book? Surely not." 



"By no means," replied Mr. Reynolds. "You know that all the classical win- 

 ners of England trace to some one of forty-three mares, such as the Tregonwell Barb 

 mare, ancestress of Whalebone and Whisker; the Layton Barb mare from which we 

 get Thormanby, Apology and your Derby winner Iroquois, and the Old Vintner mare 

 to which trace St. Giles and Bloomsbury. Now he classifies each of these mares 

 by a number, making the Tregonwell Barb mare No. i in his system because more 

 classic winners trace to her than to any other. Next comes the Burton Barb mare 

 to which trace Harkaway, Blacklock, Voltigeur, Sir Hercules and other good ones. 

 Stockwell, Rataplan, King Tom, Lanercost and The Flying Dutchman trace to the 

 dam of the True Blues, which makes his No. 3 family and so on." 



"Well, that is all right, so far as performances go, but that No. 3 family is far- 

 and-away the best family, so far as sires go," I replied. 



'That is just what I told him," said Mr. Reynolds, "but he gets around that by 

 marking the sire families in blue pencil and the performing families in red, by way 

 of distinction." 



Three years after that I met Mr. Lowe at Pasadena, where he was the guest 

 of the late Simeon G. Reed in whose employ as a steamboat officer I had been, a 

 quarter of a century previously. Mr. Lowe was always very gentlemanly, but very 

 dogmatical, showing that the doctrine of infallibility was not confined to the Vatican. 

 One of his pet ideas was that Lexington was a horse of no real merit in himself, but 

 was entirely indebted for his success to the daughters of Glencoe with which he had 

 been mated through a monopoly of that blood acquired by Mr. Robert Alexander. I 

 took occasion to carry all my American books over to him the next day and showed 

 him conclusively that the four best horses of Lexington's get had not a drop of Glen- 

 coe blood in them, these being Tom Bowling, Harry Bassett, Duke of Magenta and 

 Kingfisher. This staggered him, as he had been told that Norfolk, Asteroid and 

 Wanderer were the best. He left for England about two months later and died 

 shortly after his arrival in London, appointing Mr. William Allison, of the Interna- 

 tional Horse Exchange, 45 Pall Mall, as his literary executor. 



Like most other inventors, Mr. Lowe was sadly deficient in the bump of order, 

 speaking from a clerical standpoint. His notes were written on old envelopes and 



