46 THE HORSE 



facts. What Mr. Bruce Lowe did was this : taking certain 

 of the highest class three-year-old races as his standing- 

 point, he worked out the number of the descendants of each 

 of the original mares who had won these races, and the 

 family which had won the most he placed No. 1 ; and the 

 other families in due order according to their number of 

 wins. Any thinking man, wishing to breed the winner 

 of a great race, would surely choose for his matron a mare 

 which belonged to a family that had been frequently 

 successful, and not select one from a family which had 

 never won one at all ! Both mares might be equally good- 

 looking and truly shaped, and there might be nothing 

 to choose between them as far as the eye could judge, 

 and yet it would be a not very intelligent act to proceed 

 to breed from the mare of the unsuccessful family, in 

 preference to the one that came from the winning strain ! 

 Moreover, if any other important weight-for-age races are 

 taken, and in any of the chief foreign racing countries, the 

 same winning families come invariably to the front, though 

 abroad their order sometimes changes a little, generally 

 owing to the prevalence, or otherwise, of mares of any 

 particular family in that particular country. 



In order to show how Mr. Bruce Lowe's system works out, 

 some tables of the different families are here appended for 

 sixty years — 1850-1909 — which have won any of the classic 

 races he took as a test. Although in this limited period 

 the placing of the families does not quite accord with that 

 of the fuller tale of years, up to the time of his death, it is 

 strikingly shown how prolific of winners his leading families 

 have been, and what a falling off there is towards the end of 

 the list, which is a very strong proof of the truth of his 

 contention. Though other of the original mares bring 

 the number up to fifty, none of their descendants have won 

 a classic race during this period : — 



