I? 



We need not attach too much weight to these figures ; 

 but they recall the often repeated assertion that the 

 Eclipse blood is asserting its greater vitality over the other 

 main strains, and perhaps go to confirm its accuracy. 



Bav and Brown Thoroughbreds 



At the present time bay race-horses are, as for many 

 years past they have been, in the majority. The three 

 great lines from which our best Thoroughbreds have 

 sprung are the Eclipse (chestnut), with which we dealt 

 in the last chapter, the Herod (bay), and the Matchem 

 (bay), all three of which blend in the pedigree of Blacklock 

 (bay, 1814), whence we trace Voltaire, Bay Middleton, 

 Voltigeur, Vedette, down to Galopin, St. Simon, and 

 Persimmon — all bays or browns, with a tendency to pro- 

 duce bays among their progeny. This is markedly the case 

 with Galopin and St. Simon, neither of which horses, it is 

 said, have ever begotten a chestnut. 



Before going further, it may be well to say that it is 

 proposed to treat bay and brown as varieties of the 

 same colour. It goes without saying that we have bays in 

 plenty which cannot possibly be mistaken for browns, and 

 that we have browns which cannot be mistaken for bays ; 

 but, as we all know, horses frequently occur of which the 

 colour is so doubtful that they are described in the Stud 

 Book and elsewhere as " bay or brown." 



Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt,* writing of the horses seen 

 among the Anazeh tribes of Arabia, says : — 



" There is, among English people, a general idea that grey — 

 especially fleabitten grey — is the commonest Arabian colour. 

 But this is not so among the Anazeh. Bays are still more 



* The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates. 



