A PERIOD OF PROPOUND DEPRESSION 347 



tiirough Voltaire — and both were out of daughters 

 of Brilliant 1899. Marathon sired colts of great uni- 

 f Qrmity, much after his own type. He stands seventh 

 among the sires in France in number of prize-win- 

 ning descendants at the Societe Hippique Perche- 

 rbnne de France shows from 1901 to 1910. His colts 

 at Oaklawn proved to be extra good — ^large, heavy- 

 boned, well-proportioned. Before they were all 

 foaled, in 1891, C. P. Jones of Minneapolis, Minn., 

 came to Oaklawn and secured the assistance of 

 James M. Fletcher in purchasing three or four car- 

 loads of grade draft mares in Kane and Du Page 

 counties. After buying the mares he went to Oak- 

 lawn to buy a stallion and would not be put off with 

 anything short of Marathon, then the best individual 

 in stud service. He finally bought the horse for 

 $3,000 cash and shipped him to Minnesota with the 

 grade mares. Marathon did not sire a purebred colt 

 after leaving Oaklawn, and his sale was undoubtedly 

 a serious loss to Percheron breeding interests there, 

 as the sale of Brilliant 3d and the death of Bril- 

 liant 1271 removed the only sires at all comparable 

 with Marathon, and his absence was keenly felt from 

 1893 on. In this case, as in many others where a 

 valuable sire is lost, the mistake was not fully real- 

 ized until nearly a decade had elapsed. 



Introuvable 16875 (24146), champion at the Co- 

 lumbian Exposition in 1893, was used from 1893 to 

 1897. He was black without markings, aiid a horse 

 of immense size, standing over 17.2 hands high and 

 weighing more than 2,300 pounds in show condition. 



