207 



CHAPTER Xir. 



BLOOD MARES. 



** Give my horse to Timon : 

 It foals me straight and able horses." 



Shakespeare. 



TO the Turf enthusiast, stud annals are as rich in 

 information as the Fasti and Athenaeus are to 

 the scholar. They tell how Eldon " drove Madcap" 

 when she found herself bereaved, and took forcible 

 possession of her foal ; how Caelebs drank at Dan 

 Dawson's poisoned trough, and was only saved by 

 oceans of vinegar ; how Milksop took fright at her 

 foal, and flatly refused to .suckle it ; how Young 

 Cyprus was wounded in the Peninsular War, and a 

 Bugle mare mysteriously spirited away from her pad- 

 dock one night for ever and aye ; how Kappa out of 

 Beta was killed by lightning ; how Sir C. Bunbury 

 sold his grey Diomede colt with a leg growing out of 

 its chest to a showman ; how Touch-me-not under- 

 went the Caesarean operation after death ; how sister 

 to Batteraway had a fire accident ; how Languish was 

 home-sick, and refused to breed under a foreign sky ; 

 how Vesta had her fourteen foals all greys, and Elis's 

 dam was barren for ten out of twenty seasons ; how 

 Mrs. Candour broke her neck out hunting, and Altisi- 

 dora died, heavy in foal to Blacklock, as she struggled 

 to get out of the ditch ; how Speed always made a 

 point of killing her foals, while a Tuft mare could 

 never rear one to live ; how Resurrection was thrown 



