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NEWMINSTER LINE FLOURISHES AGAIN I referred the other day to the length of time that has elapsed since the male line of Newminster was at the top of the sires lis.t at the end of a racing season. It is there this time, however, thanks to Bayardo and, if Gainsborough fulfills his promise, next year it looks like keeping there. A curious feature of this development is that Newminster has not been perpetuated through his most distinguished sons or grandsons. Hermit, it is true, made a great individual success as a stallion, but there is only one male descendant of his Uston available now. This was hardly imaginable at the period when Hermit headed the winning sires during seven successive years and introduced us to the big fees which until then, breeders had resolutely declined to pay for even Blair Athol or his sire Stockwell. On the other hand, Newminsters other great son. Lord Clifton, sired a good many better horses than Hampton, which was a good, honest stayer, but not really at tlte top of the tree as a race horse. He would not have compared, for example, with Petrarch and possibly not with Hawthorndcn or Wenloek, all three of which were sons of Lord Clifden and winners of the St. Leger. Again, though Hampton was credited with three Derby winners. Merry Hampton, Ayrshire and Lndas and two other sons who came near to winning, viz., Royal Hampton and Highland Chief, it is not through any of these that the great triumph has been won, but through the comparatively undistinguished Hampton horse Bay Ronald, which was a useful handicap performer and no more. He won the City and Suburban as a five-year-old with 112 pounds and that is about the measure of his capacity. In short, he was not by any means so good as Hampton himself, to which he was also inferior in respect to conformation. Nevertheless, it was Bay Ronald which sired Bayardo, which in his turn has given ns Gay Crusader and Gainsborough and it is through this line that the fame of Newminster seems destined to live on. Nor is Bayardo the only son of Bay Ronald to make good as a race horse and stallion. Dark Ronald did extraordinary well before leaving this country for Germany and Macdonald II., another Bay Ronald horse, is a favorite sire in France, "Vigilant" in London Sportsman.
