312 THE ENGLISH TURF 



should be the result of a $ venture in blood stock on the 

 part of a citizen of York nearly ninety years ago. 



Blacklock was a bay rather a dark bay with black 

 points, and a very big horse, and it is said that his fetlocks 

 and pasterns formed an almost straight line. Some of the 

 Yorkshire folks swore by him as the best they had ever seen, 

 but others would have none of him, naming him the " Bishop 

 Burton monstrosity." " The Druid," who can have written of 

 him from hearsay evidence only, describes him as follows : 



" He was a great black-brown, with a stride which required half 

 a mile to settle itself in, a head like a half moon, with eyes quite 

 in his cheeks, and quarters and shoulders as fine as horse could 

 wear. Perhaps to the eye he might be rather light in the foreribs, 

 though the tape told a different tale, and the hocks of his stock 

 generally stood well away from them, a formation which requires 

 great strength in the loins to support. The hunting field was quite 

 as much their sphere as the racecourse. The Cambridgeshire men 

 still remember how well John Ward got to his hounds for seven 

 seasons on Forester, and there must have been nearly a thousand 

 of his grandsons, by the hollow-backed Belzoni, one time or 

 another, at the covert side. Mr. Watt gave forty pounds for him 

 as a two-year-old, and after his great racing career he broke 

 through his rule, and kept him for the stud. The result was not 

 encouraging, as his legs frightened breeders away; but Mr. Kirby 

 took him for a season at a hundred, and cleared eight hundred 

 per cent, by his bargain. Mr. Watt had him back for three seasons, 

 and was beginning a fourth with him when he died." 



Six years after his death Blacklock's remains were taken 

 up, and the bones put together by an anatomist, and " The 

 Druid " tells us that Mr. Watt paid 10 for a skeleton rider, 

 who " yapped " his teeth when a string was pulled, and that 

 the spectral pair were exhibited at an agricultural meeting 

 at Beverley. 



Mr. Joseph Osborne writes of Blacklock as "perhaps the 

 grandest horse that ever was foaled, barring his riddle 

 head " ; and there is no doubt that the horse had an exceed- 

 ingly clumsy head and a tremendous crest as well. Indeed, 

 the "Blacklock crest" was a household word amongst 

 breeders for many years ; but fiddle head and heavy crest 

 have almost disappeared now from the line, and some of the 

 more recent representatives of it have particularly sweet 



