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WHEN IS A HORSE A THOROUGHBRED I Webster at Variance with Assistant Professors and Racing Men in Defining Term. Taking to task the Holsteiu-Friesian Association because it used the word thoroughbred as an adjective, the Breeders Gazette says the term is not in any sense synonymous with "purebred" and is properly used only "to designate the English breed of running horses." This criticism reflects the tendency among racing men to appropriate to their own exclusive use and behoof the most attractive, expressive and commercially valuable word in the English language applicable to improved live stock, and incidentally introduces one of the terms invented by the assistant professors, who are trying to teach the horsemen of the country to s;;y "purebred standard bred" when they mean standard bred trotter or registered trotting horses, writes G. Chaplin in the New York Herald. Concerning the term thoroughbred Noah Webster, who was regarded as a pretty fair authority before the advent of the assistant professors, defined it as an adjective to mean "bred from the best blood through a long line; pan blooded: said of stock, as horses, hence, having the characteristics of such breeding: mottlcsuin,-. courageous, of elegant form, or the like." And as a noun to mean "a thoroughbred animal, especially a horse." Old Authorities Support Webster. That Websters definitions are historically and philosnphieally sound the old authorities seem to prove, and to assert that ■ particular breed is entitled to a monoply of the hynotizing term is apparently Jtlxiut as unwarrantable as it would be to maintain that no new club may use the name Jockey Club because a particular organization has modestly assumed to pre-empt the generic name instead of a specific one. The assurance with which the tis-.ist.int professors and others use the term thoroughbred as a noun, beginning it with a big T to prove that it belongs to a particular breed, would lead one to suppose, of course, he could find the word thoroughbred blazoiid across the title page of the official stud book in which such horses are registered in England, but nothing of the kind is there or elsewhere in the original volume or any of the twenty-two volumes which makes up the series to date. "The General Stud Book. Containing the Perigrees of Race Horses." is the title of James Weatherbys pioneer work, brought out in MM, and which was the first herd of stud lwtok ever published for any breed of livestock Picks ••Turf Register anil Sportsmans and Breeders Stud Book." published the same year, contains 52S pages of matter relating to the pedigrees, performances and history of famous English race horses, and if the word thoroughbred is anywhere in the book, a careful search by the writer litis failed to liml it. So. too. with half a dozen sporting dictionaries published in England and Ireland in the eightcnth century and the early years of the nineteenth. In them you may find the terms "race horse" .nid "racer" and "running horse" and "blood horse." but the word thoroughbred in nowhere used or defined. Two Words in Taplins Day. In William Taplins Sporting Dictionary, published shortly after James Weatherby brought out the first volume of his "General Stud l.ook," the author s:iys. ill defining the term "lata hone:- -"The pedigrees of all thorough bred horses have haaa so long and so justly recorded." etc., showing, it would seem, from the use of two words, that no such term as thoroughbred was then known to him. And right lure we have the origin of the much abused word. Thomas Blundevill. who wrote in 1009; Gervase Markham. 1017: William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. 1007: Thomas De Grey, 1070. and Sir William Hope. 1090. all spoke of the English "running horse." but when Richard l.crenger wrote his "History and Art of Horsemanship." about one hun. lied yean after Be Greys "Oseapleat Born Man," he used the term "race horse" almost ex -elusively. And John Lawrence, the leading writer of a little later period in England, began to talk about "bred horses" when referring to racers whose pedigrees were found in the early racing calendars of Cheney. Ileber. Tilting and Faweoner, or the original collection of pedigrees of race horses, published by Mr. Pick in 1788. At that time, and for many years afterward, the runner was the only horse the breeding of which was preserved and recorded, hence the term "bred" horse. "All bred horses cannot race." Ltwrence says in his "Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses." "many of the highest blood having neither speed nor continuance." El-ewhere he writes of "full bred" horses and cattle, and "tine bred" horses and "thorough shaped" horses, and "thorough-bred" hones, using the last-named expression as synonymous with thoroughly bred, or, us Webster has it "bred from the best blood through a long line." Not the Narae of Breed. That Lavrcn o did not regard the two words which he was. perhaps, the first to hook tog.-tiier with a hyphen, as the name of a breed, is made plain all through his books. In his "History and Delineation of the Horse" he says, for example: "Our present vanities of the horse and their denominations are as follows: The Racer, Kace Horse or Running Horse." etc. And again. "This general description may suffice until we come to treat of the English Race Horse." Like Taplin. Weatherby and all his contemporaries. Lawrence shows that he regarded the proper name of the breed as the "English nice horse." And this is plainly the opinion of T. Hornby Mor-land. whose "Genealogy of the English Race Horse." published in INK, seems to contain no such term as thorough -bred or thoroughbred. To the same effect is the title page of N. llanckey Smiths classic. "Observations on Breeding for the Turf. Containing Also Remarks on the Comparative Excellence of the English Race-Horse of the Present Day and Former Times," published in MBS, Smith uses the terms "blood horse," "race horse," "racer" or "runner" on almost every page of his book, but rarely the term "thorough-bred," and then only as an adjective. In this country the early stud books of Mason and Edgar and Wallace, gave prominence to the terms "race horse." "turf horse" and "blood horse," but none of them had such a word as thoroughbred on its title page. S. D. Bruce was the first to use it in his "American Stud Book, Containing Full Pedigrees of AH Thoroughbred Stallions and Mares." and etc.. published in 1S08. Two years later Bruce defined a thoroughbred race horse as one having at least five uncontaminated crosses of racing blood, or five generations of registered ancestors in all lines of his pedigree, and this is a commonly accepted nil" among breeders of horses and other registered live stock, though some draw the line at six generations. Now that the breed of trotting horses is becoming old enough to have representatives which can sjaslifj under this rule, the term thoroughbred trotter is frequently heard among horsemen identified with harness racing, who maintain that they have as good a right to use it as the race horse men have, and that the same right belongs to the breeders of any other class of live stock. While beer/ conceding that the English race horse was the first thoroughbred horse, by reason of having beeu the first breeding which was preserved and recorded in a stud book, they as stoutly deny that he is the only thoroughbred horse.
