102 THE HORSE. 



turf; but twice in will be found to be more in accordance with the 

 practice of our most successful (early) breeders. 



15. THE INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST IMPREGNATION Seems to 



extend to the subsequent ones ; this has been proved by several 

 experiments, and is especially marked in the equine genus. In the 

 series of examples, preserved in the museum of the College of Sur- 

 geons, the markings of the male quagga, when united with the 

 ordinary mare, are continued clearly for three generations beyond 

 the one in which the quagga was the actual sire ; and they are so 

 clear as to leave the question settled without a doubt. 



16. WHEN SOME OF THE ELEMENTS of which an individual 

 sire is composed are in a cordance with others making up those of 

 the dam, they coalesce in such a kindred way as to make what is 

 called " a hit." On the other hand, when they are too incongru- 

 ous, an animal is the result wholly unfitted for the task he is in- 

 tended to perform. 



THESE PRINCIPLES, together with the observations following upon 

 them, have been quoted verbatim, at great length, by the late Mr. 

 Herbert, in his elaborate quarto work on " The Horse of America," 

 with the very flattering testimony that he had done so "not for 

 the purpose of avoiding trouble, or sparing time, but because he 

 conceives the principles laid down to be correct throughout, the 

 reasoning logical and cogent, the examples well taken, and the de- 

 ductions such as can scarcely be denied." In support of this 

 opinion, he adduces several instances in which a " hit" has occurred 

 in America by carrying out the last axiom in the preceding list. 

 Thus he says, at page 260 of his second volume, " I think myself 

 that it is made clear by recent events, and that such is shown to be 

 the case by the tables of racing stock given at the close of the first 

 volume, that, previous to the last quarter of a century, the Ame- 

 rican turfman was probably breeding in too much of the old Vir- 

 ginia and South Carolina ante-revolutionary stock, and that the 

 American racehorse has been improved by the recent cross of mo- 

 dern English blood. It is also worthy of remark, that every one 

 of the four most successful of modern English stallions in this 

 country which have most decidedly hit with our old stock Levia- 

 than, Sarpedon, Priam, and Glencoe all trace back to several 

 crosses of Herod blood; Grlenoe and Priam not less than three or 

 four several times each to croeses of Partner blood, and directly 

 several times over to the Godolphin Barb, or Arabian, which are 

 the very strains from which our Virginian stock derives its pecu- 

 liar excellence. It is farther worthy of remark, that two stallions 

 have decidedly hit with the imported English mare Reel, as proved 

 by her progeny, Lecompte and Prioress, respectively to Boston and 

 Sovereign. Now Reel, through Glencoe, Catton, Gohanna, and 

 Smolensko, has herself no less than seven distinct strains of Herod 



