Blood Mares. 213 



they essayed it ; and Jericho's " revival" in the Flying 

 Dutchman's Ascot Cup is the best modern performance 

 of the kind. 



Nature has no set laws, or at least no turf Newton 

 can discover them, as to the best age for breeding 

 from a mare ; and, in fact, all our great runners have 

 been born at haphazard, between three and twenty- 

 three. A sire may go on for five or six years more ; 

 but a mare generally becomes very feeble after that 

 age, and either misses or throws diseased foals. It is 

 no doubt very desirable, as with greyhounds, to have 

 youth on one side ; and it invariably happens that if a 

 mare is very old, or has been very much knocked 

 about before she is put to the stud, she reproduces un- 

 soundness, which may be slumbering in herself, and 

 seems to lose all power of counterbalancing that or 

 any other bad points in the horse. We remember a 

 remarkable instance of a mare, who had hunted with 

 fifteen stone, and been driven and ridden on the road 

 with little cessation till she was nearly twenty ; and 

 although neither she nor the young horse she was 

 then sent to had ever been doctored for a curb, or 

 shown any symptoms of one, her two foals had their 

 hind legs as curved as scythes, and age only very 

 partially removed their deformity. Apropos of the 

 subject of hard work, which may have had its effect 

 on the Crucifix stock, it is worthy of note that Re- 

 becca, the dam of AHce Hawthorne, Rowena, Annan- 

 dale, and Fair Helen (the dam of Lord of the Hills 

 and Lord of the Isles), never did a day's work in her 

 life. In fact, we have it from her late owner, who 

 leased her for several years before his death to Mr. 

 Andrew Johnstone, that, to the best of his belief, 

 neither she nor her dam, nor her grandam, had ever 

 been broken in. Meteora, Plover, and Violante, who 

 were all of them in Lord Grosvenor's hands at one 

 time, never had a foal worth its corn. 



Whether it be politic to breed from a roarer — or, 



