70 [AsSEMBfiT 



association, other benefits of veterinary information and training 

 could be availably combined. In importing horses from Eng- 

 land, whether for general stud purposes, or more exclusively 

 improving the native thorough bred stock by judicious crosses^ 

 the very best blood should be obtained j but not the fashionable 

 winner, or near kinsman of some of the "cracks," held perhaps 

 at an exorbitant price. The vaunted Derby or Leger winner may 

 by no means prove the preferable sire j and even less likely so 

 for the sounder character and trials of the American turf, and the 

 right object which should be held in view with all racing, viz., 

 raising horses for improving the general and more useful breeds. 

 Race horses, of the best lineage, with good substance and true 

 shape and action, together with undeniably sound eyes, hocks, and 

 feet — and in a particular manner the latter — should be sought for 

 and imported. Such horses can be selected and bought at rea- 

 sonable prices ; and for this country, it is not bad copies, from 

 not eligible originals, that should be in request, however cried 

 up either original or copy may liave been, or be, for saved terms 

 of flying two or three year-old speed, or winning one of the great 

 Staines. It is true and honest horses, of superior blood and form, 

 that are wanted. The need for a hundred — or even two hun- 

 dred of such horses for this State alone, is very great. In 18S6 

 or 1837, an enumeration went the round of the racing ^ress of 

 England, of the horses which had recently, or within a year or 

 two previous, been taken away for America : Apparition, Auto- 

 crat, Barefoot, Claret, Chateau Margaux, Consol, Emancipation, 

 Hedgeford, Luxborough, Leviathan, Lapdog, Margrave, Merman, 

 Norton, Sarpedou, St. Giles, Shakspeare, Tranby, Young Trufile, 

 &c. ; and at the Newmarket Houghton meeting of that year, I 

 remember a discussion among some leading racing men, whether 

 the turf at no distant day, would not require to cross the Atlantic 

 f(3r some of the good old stout-running sort again? But these, 

 and some fine horses imported since are quite absorbed, and leave 

 no sufficient traces or impress, from insufficiency of numbers, for 

 that extensive occasion for stud hoTSes everywhere seen, and 

 from the fact that native thorough-bred breeding studs are not 

 enough studied or systematizt^d for the purpose of raising and 



