'THE AMERICAN YEAR; iSSi. 155 



consequence, Iroquois and Foxhall were exceptionally 

 lucky. That is but shabby reasoning. Iruquois could 

 only beat the horses set against him, and if ' he never 

 met a really first-class three-year-old, as sound in wind 

 and limb as himself"' that is due to the fact of EnHish 

 owners not having entered any such— if any such were 

 that year in existence. It was forgotten by our turf- 

 writers, in their anxiety to keep up the credit of Old 

 England as a horse-breeding nation, that the mighty 

 Btnd Or was well beaten, in the Cambridgeshire, by 

 Foxhall, at a ditlerence of 8 lb., the one being a three- 

 year-old and the other a four-year-old. True, previous 

 to tliat. in the City and Suburban, the English horse 

 gave the American 3-t lb. and a beatinuf, but after that 

 Foxhall won the Grand Prize of Paris, and, in all 

 probabilit}^, could have beaten Bend Or in their Octo- 

 ber struggle at level weights. One or two of our racing 

 commentators became alarmed at the future prospects 

 of our English horses, because of what had been 

 achieved by the Americans, but, happily for their own 

 peace of mind, they soon calmed down. 



The story of the Derby taken to America by 

 Iroquois can be easily told. It was anticipated by at 

 least one of our best-informed racing commentators 

 (Mr. John Corlett), that sooner or later the Derby 

 winner would be a horse hailing from America, and 

 his prophecy was probably more speedily fulhlled 

 than even he expected. Peregrine's easy victory in 

 the Two Th'msand Guineas led, of course, to his being 

 first favourite for the Derby of 1881, for which his 

 quotation at the start was pretty nearly even money, 

 6 to 5 against him being the exact figure, whilst 



