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QUEEN MARY AND GLENOOE. In 1834 Glencoe won the Two Thousand, Plenipotentiary tire Derby and Touchstone the St. Leger. All were race horses of extraordinary merit. In an article concerning their performances an eastern writer says: "Ont of this year of turf prodigies, of cross purposes and heart-burnings, all falsely foreboding the downfall or even the decline of the turf, were evolved events of "the highest importance to tho turf in America, and it seemed as though they had to happen just as they did for us to get any good out of them. The existence and influence of a score or more of the brightest equine lights that have shone on this continent were doubtless conditioned on Glencoes defeat by Plenipo before the Derby and in that race. And he ran third in the Blue Ribbon event. He had quality enough to win it as it was. On this slight link was conditioned the facts of a Hindoo, a Hanover, a Hamburg, and that vast influence of the femalelS descendants of the son of Sultan on the American thoroughbred. The English retained what they thought the best two of tho trio, selling us the cast-off, but a real brilliant if not the brightest of the cluster. Plenipotentiary was not a striking success at the stud, but it should not be forgotten that bred to Myrrha, daughter of Whalebone, he got an unnamed filly which, bred to Gladiator became the dam of Queen Mary, one of .the greatest matrons of the turf. Touchstone came soon into greatness as a sire, getting three Derby winners and founding the prepotent Hermit-Nowminster line long fashionable, though now a bit passe in England, the representative of which in this country is the one-hundred-thousand dollar St. Blaise, winner of the Derby of 1883. "Some families of horses, like some of the human family, seem predestined to misfortune and calamity, from which some of them emerge to greatness after the fullness of time. Queen Mary has been referred to, and her miseries rival thoBe of her namesake, the Stuart queen, over whose fate sentimental tears of three centuries have been shed. Ramsey of Barnton bred Queen Mary the filly, but the homely creature possessed no attraction for him, and he gave her to his friend lAnson, who was a great breeder and should have had some sense. Bnt Queen Mary was too cheap, and neither he nor his trainer valued her, and they got rid of her for a song, a Scotch farmer becoming her master. She had left a filly behind her, however, before the transfer, Haricot, and in time the latter disclosed something of the gift of galloping. Then lAnson went hunting after Queen Mary. He found her on a bleak hillside, in dead of winter, half starved and frozen, too weak to raise a welcoming whinny for her deliverer, shivering at her side a yearling filly, Braxy by Moss Trooper, and a starvling runt of a colt, Balrowney by Annandale and Queen Mary herself in foal to a cold-blooded horse ! Was ever four-footed merit in such distress as this? Twenty pounds got the undeserving lAnson the whole lot, and he had a patience-taxing task to get this phantom drove to his home. That trifling reinvestment meant to the lucky lAnson Blink Bonnie, Derby and Oaks ; Blair Athol, Derby and St. Leger ; Caller On, St. Leger, and any quantity of other good things, including for us over here, Bonnie Scotland, Luke Blackburn, George Kinney and four-footed wealth it would take hours to schedule. " Bonnie Scotland was another of those unfortunates predestinate. In England he showed quality enough to live with any of them, but something was always certain to happen to him when about ready for a race. Shipped over here, he languished among the sloughs of Illinois, as did the sire of the great Miss Woodford, Billet, until the fullness of time and other things rescued them and brought them to the blue grass paradise, where distinguished mates awaited them. "Glencoe had the narrowest of escapes". Although, like Diomed with Young Giantess, he had, before his deportation, presented his countrymen with a priceless gift in Pocahontas she the dam of three such giants as Stockwell, Rataplan and King Tom, yet she came too late to save his reputation, and they cast him out in 1836, before Pocahontas was foaled. They had passed upon him and found him wanting, and there was no appeal. Now, could he have only landed right up to his knees in the blue grass of Kentucky, what great things might not have happened right away? But that was not in the womb of fate. "To Mr. James Jackson of Northern Alabama, was the honor of the first American ownership of Glencoe. He had imported the Derby winner of 1832, St. Giles, but the horse had died soon after arrival, and he replaced him with Glencoe, the two being closely related through Tramp, the sire of St. Giles and of Glencoes dam. How they over expected to raise race horses in that blue grassless region of cotton stalks tho Lord only knows, but they succeeded in originating a few, and Hunts- ville, where Mr. Jackson lived, was something of a racing center. It was long odds that Glencoe would not here achieve tho distinction that came to him later, thoroughbred mares of any quality being as scarce in Alabama as tho conventional dodo. Hither came the English exile, worn by a long voyage in a sailing vessel, and leg weary from having hiked through threo states, this being before the luxuries of horse palace cars and first class Atlantic steamer passages. Glencoes opportunity came in the death of Mr. Jackson himself, and the speculation that sent the great nag up the Mississippi to the blue grass region of Kentucky, where he became the property, first of Mr. John Harper and later of Mr. A. Keene Richards, in whose possession he died in 1861. His influence on American thoroughbred blood, chiefly through his daughters, is incalculable, and it would require a column to name the great mares, racers and matrons which he got. They were out of all proportion to the number of his sons, but there was scarcely an exception as to their high quality. The male lino also showed the prepotency of tho son of Sultan. Brad to Alarics dam, she by Tranby, the result was the good race horse Vandal, and the union of the latter with Hymenia, by Yorkshire, produced Virgil, which, though so little esteemed as to have been put over the jumps and degraded to wagon, bred to Florence byLexington, gave to tho world the incomparable Hindoo, whence Hanover and Hamburg, and others capable of sustaining the line of Glencoe."
