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POPULAR BLOOD LINES. According to tradition the first Arabian ever brought to England was the Markham, imported by a Turkish merchant of that name, and sold to King James I. for 500 guineas. There is some reason to credit this, as Gervase Markham, who wrote a treatise on the horse in the previous reign, makes no mention of Arabians. A Duke of Newcastle, who wrote a book on horsemanship shortly after the death of James I., states that he had frequently seen the horse, which he describes as an undersized and by no means well shaped bay. He won several plates at Newmarket for the king, who was passionately fond of racing, but there is no record of his having sired anything of note. Straddling, sometimes called the Lister Turk, was brought over in the reign of James IL by the Duke of Berwick, who captured him at the battle of Buda in Hungary. He was the sire of Snake, whose name appears in some pedigrees, but the. first to appear in England of the three famous eastern horses that founded the modern thoroughbred was the Byerly Turk, about the year 1699. Though this horse was bred to very few mares, he got racers which distinguished themselves in Sprite, Black .Hearty and Barto, and also sired Jigg, described in the old annals as a very indifferent racehorse, but destined to make his sire live forever in breeding archives. The Darley Arabian was brought over by the brother of a Yorkshire squire who had been traveling in Turkey. He was bred to very few mares besides those of his owner and neighbor, Mr. Childers. For Mr. Darley he sired Almanzor 1713 a champion racehorse and his full brother Aleppo for which the Duke of Somerset paid a high price, as values wentin those days. i But the Darley sire did much better for Mr .Childers than for his owner, as mated with Betty Leedes he got Flying Childers, foaled in 1715. This hprse is supposed to have been the champion racehorse of the eighteenth century, not even excepting his relative, Eclipse, for when six years old he gave twelve pounds to Fox, considered up to then the best horse in England, and beat him a quarter of a mile over the four miles Beacon course at Newmarket. As a sire Bartletts Childers, whose title to be the full brother of his flying namesake is disputed, but which was undoubtedly a son of the Darley Arabian, far outshone his relative, as he was the great grandfather of Eclipse. The last of the great trio was the Godol-phin Arabian, a brown bay with one white heel, of which an authentic portrait hangs in the library at Gog Magog, the Cambridgeshire seat of the Godolphin family, in the park near which his grave is shown, the inscription stating he died in his twenty-ninth year, 1753. At one time a strain of the blood of this horse was considered absolutely necessary in the pedigree of every good racehorse, but of late years it has almost died out, not only in England, but in all other countries where racehorses are extensively bred. As far as England is concerned, the Byerly Turk blood seems destined to share the same fate, but it is strongly represented in this country by descendants of Herod, and also in Australia. This great colt, which was known during his racing days as King Herod, was bred by the Duke of Cumberland in 1758, and lived until the end of the covering season 1780. His dam Cypron, foaled in 1750, had some Darley Arabian blood in her, veins, and was a wonderful producer. Put to the stud as a four-year-old, she produecd no less than sixteen living foals, being barren in 1767, and dying in the summer of 177L More remarkable still, thirteen of these foals, though most of them were by different sires, ultimately proved themselves great racehqrses. An agitation has recently been started among English breeders to a revival of the Herod blood. Thishas led to the importation of a number of Australian sires, though none of them are so rich in the desired strain, as many that could be purchased for the same or even less money in this country. If the craze for Herod blood continues, as seems more than probable, England should afford a really good market for some of our strongly native bred sires. These do not seem to be very popular in their native land, imported blood now being all the rage here. Probably owners of horses tracing strongly to Herod, whose most famous descendant in this country was, of course, his grandson Diomed, might find a good market in England. Daily America.
