Blood Sires. 195 



1000 guineas a-year to Mr. Kirby during the four 

 seasons he had him ; and although in the course of 

 eighty-seven years he never treated himself to such 

 an honour, that Father of the Yorkshire Turf laid out 

 nearly 300/. in having his favourite's picture taken 

 and engraved. His Lanercost might, like Orvile, be 

 said to have "-received all Yorkshire" at his paddocks ; 

 and it was perhaps owing to this cause that he could 

 not hold the place he won in 1847, with Van Tromp, 

 War Eagle, and Ellerdale. In the spring of the pre- 

 ceding year Mr. Kirby had been sadly teazed by the 

 foreigners and their English agents to part with him 

 for 3000. guineas, the sum at which he had bought 

 him at Newcastle, " stripped of everything but his 

 shoes — not even the halter in ;" but he stoutly re- 

 fused to let him go under 4000 guineas, and cleared 

 1600 by him in 1847 alone. Six or seven years after, 

 he was sold, when barely eighteen, with Hernandez 

 and a couple of mares and a foal, as make-weights, 

 for 1500/. the lot! The earnings of Melbourne, after 

 Canezou made him the rage, were also something 

 very enormous. We have only heard of one stud 

 horse being under suspicion of late years, as a coun- 

 terfeit ; and we believe that his owner had a hint 

 given him, which answered its purpose. The trainer 

 of the real Simon Pure, who was averred to have 

 been thrown overboard in a storm in the German 

 Ocean, looked him over, and said that the resemblance 

 was very remarkable, but that one mark was about 

 two inches too low. 



When we find a little horse like Abd-el-Kader, 

 whose dam worked in a fast Shrewsbury coach, and a 

 cast-off of Lord Exeter's, doing the four miles and 

 a quarter of the Liverpool Steeple Chase under ten 

 stone in very little over ten minutes, we have no great 

 reason to join in the elegies over the decay of our 

 horses' stamina. Horologists assert that the five* 

 year-old Sir Solomon and Cockfighter ran four miles 



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