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INTERESTING BREEDING DISCUSSION I Advocacy of the Necessity of Mingling the Eclipse, , Herod and Matchem Lines of Descent. "Blood will t«ll." Tin- victory of Pootlilyn and j Oyx on Monday afternoon admirably illustrated 1 the above maxim. I need hardly repeat tliat from 1 tlie moment I saw Poethlyn. after he had won his ■ first nan this year at Sandown. 1 noted him as an J ideal Livcr|iool horse, but the external shapes would ■ not suffice were the inner worth absent, and that 1 is where the breeding tells. There has been a 1 Iteriod of reaction from tin Bruce Ix wc Figure System, during which the slaves of the figures have been rightly enough held up to ridicule, but all that c has in no way affected me. nor would it have affected Bruce Lowe had he lived. The sole mistake J lie made was calling the figures idea a "system" instead of a "guide." In the preface to the first J hastily -produced volume, twenty years ago, I stated 1 this in effect. No man denies that it is well to breed from the most successful broodmares or from the produce of 1 such mares, whether they be Pocahontas. Queen | Mary. Store or Doris, but any one of such mares or their produce may give us occasionally worthless foals. There has never been, and never will be. : any certainty in breeding. Even those who reviled the Figure System — as exploited by its most fanatical devotees — have now come to recognize its utility as an A, It. guide. I notice that my friend. "Mankato." from time to times uses it in this way. which is probably due to his own studies in biomot-rical figure results having taught him something, though then-, as always, he knows well enough we J cannot make breeding an exact science. We can only follow, as wisely as may be, on the teaching of past cx| erieiice. Well. Queen Mary, in the case of Poethlyn, gives us n fine object lesson in the value of the best-class female descent. No one will deny that Queen Mary was oik of the greatest broodmares in the General j Stud Hook, or that Caller On and Itlink Bonny were , her greatest immediate female descendants. Poethlyn traces to Caller On in tail female and he takes * in a close cross of Blink Bonny, also on his dams side. His sire is by St. Frusi|uin — sister to Kendal, and even his maternal half-bred grandsire. King ; Crow, was a grandson of Agility sister to Apology ■ — Mineral, and was also a high class race horse. ■ It is always licst when in doubt to stick to the best blood and this has been proved to demonstration by the breeders of carrier pigeons. I am assured that there is but one line of blood in pigeons which produces birds that will fly through a barrage without turning to the right or left. These pigeons are apt to leave the students of heredity a long way behind before the scientific gentlemen can account 1 for the courage of the birds as distinguished from . others. Now. blood has told again in the ease of Ceyx. for where can you find lietter blood than that of his sire. John oGaunt, by Isinglass — I a Flecho?. The dam of Ceyx is Margaret, by Veracity —Miss Hoyden dam of Lally, by Oalliard. and here , we find a branch of the No. 1 family, which Lally . brought into comparatively recent distinction by . winning clow on IMUMMI |H»unds in stakes, and it is . ; to l«c regretted, by the same token, that Lally was ever permitted to leave Ireland or Knglaud and go | to Italy. Il - was a far l ctter sou of Amphioii than was Suiidridgc and. with ctpial chances, would probably have sired stock that would have materially strengthened the S|icculum line of Vedette. Anyhow. Poethlyn and Ceyx have served as good object lessons in the value of breeding, which value can only lie proved by results. In other words, had there been no racing. Poethlyn might have languished at liis original cast-off price and Ceyx might have , gone to a horse butcher, unwept, uiihonored, while , no breeders would have been any the wiser as to the merits of the parents of such obscure animals. RACING TEST INCREASES VALUE. This is but a small object lesson, but to compare small tilings with great — let us imagine a i similar i ossihility of no racing in the years when i Pontmern. Hurry On and Gay Crusader carried all 1 before them. It is safe to say that those horses * would not now, in such a case. l»e worth 1,000 I guineas for the whole three. That is to say, they would not realise that sum in open market. One thousand guineas is a liberal valuation, for there is really nothing more difficult to sell for any price at all than an entire horse, which has no i racing record. As matters stand, the racing tests i having l ccn passed, Pomniern, Hurry On and Gay Crusader are worth 150.000 guineas- -not merely to their owners, mind you, but for the improvement i of llritish bloodstock in general. They were always worth it. of course, but had there l ccn no racing their value would have been unknown. Chapel Brampton, the Birmingham winner, is by Bcp|H , a horse which is doing a great deal indeed I for the Matchem male line, and I shall be surprised if his son, Aleppo, does not sire many good winners. Beppo is the sire of My Dear and also of Gay Crusaders dam. Does not this alone show his value as a Matchem cross for first-class Eclipse line of blood? It was the intervention of Beppo between Beppo and Galeottia that made Jay Crusader what he is. It is Lord Egrcnionts theory over again with slight expansion, for we have an Eclipse horse on a Matchem mare, with any amount of Herod at the back of Galeottia through The Flying Dutchman and Thormanby. Ex ford, the •winner of the Coventry Plate, also recalls Lord Egrcinonts theory, which is. in effect, opposed to liersistent in-breeding to any male line, for Ex-ford is a son of Man ovil. whose remarkable success iu the last few years of his life was probably due to his representing such a strong outcross of Matchem. fortified by the Speculum line of Black lock through Hagioscope, and Herod through Macaroni. In dealing with the question of tail-male AmmbI and certain apparent exceptions to Lord Egrcnionts rule, Mr. I oyle wrote in an "Essay on Race Horse Breeding": "Certain lines of Eclipse have been so leavened by Herod or Matchem blood, that It is not unreasonable to suppose that they do not stand iu the same need of a complete out-cross as those in which two or three lines of Eclipse are brought together in close proximity. Touchstone and Sir Hercules are instances of the latter; Orville and at ton of the former. "In the case of Orville: A granddaughter of Tartar a horse of Bylerley Turk blood and sire of Herod is put to Eclipse and breeds King Fergus. He is put to a Herod mare and gets Beuiiigboro and he from a mare by Highflyer son of Herod gets Orville. So far there is mi further iiitnsluction of Eclipse blood. Orville. from a direct descendant of Herod. In-gcts Emilius. Emilius is put to a mare whose sire and dam are both of the Herod line and gets Plenipotentiary. VARIOUS LINES OF HEROD DIFFER. "Then again we must remember that the various lines of Herod differ greatly iu the extent to which they have been modified by Eclipse crosses. Bay Middlcton has four grandparents, not one directly ••s-e--ed fr wn Eclipse. Sultan. Langar. Tadmor, and Macaroni may be taken as specimens of what o. - ui.i. call uoiihlc Herod horses. On the other band, iu Thormanbys case the main line of Herod is kept iu check by the immense prei oiidera nee of Eclipse IiImmI elsewhere." It is clear enough that the actual top-line in a pedigree is not all iu all when we are considering a theory such as Lord Egremonts. or any other. The names of Eclipse. Herod and Matchem do not now represent the same ini|tortant individualities as they did in Iird Egrcnionts day. The main point is that continuous in-breeding to a male line of more recent origin, such as that of Blacklock or Camel, should lie avoided, but there again the evil may be avoided if we do not harn inn constantly on one string of , those particular lines. Thus by now. after per- I sistent in-breeding to Galouin. we may find a com paratively healthy outcross in descendants of Speculum through Amphion or Hagiosco|te. So. too. iu i tie- matter of Matchem. alias Melbourne, I his line has beeu so largely monoiiolized by Barcaldine that a tree line of Melbourne such as is provided by Balscaddcn may also Is- taken to represent fresh I blood. It is worthy of note i:i connection with what Mr. Doyle calls "double Herod" horses that those he | names have all proved most useful in tedigrees ] when- Eclipse lines abound, and he might also have | mentioned Carnival, the maternal grandsire of j LAI.Ikssc I,. Jouarre, dam of Desmond, and the great broodmare Testa. Carnival was a triple Herod, for he was by Sweetmeat —Volatile, by Buckthorn sou of Veni son, her dam Jocose, by Pantaloon. In this con- , licctiou the iM-digrec of the two vear-old Exford is interesiuig. for he is by Marcovil— Lamford, by Desmond, which brings in the Carnival blood. A tale male descendant of Melbourne, he takes in two lines , of Tadmor sire of Seclusion through his sire, also . on- of Macaroni, together, of course, with lines ol Eclipse. The |tcdigrce of Scatwell presents some mi ions similarities to this, for he is by Marcovil. •■"•I I is dam is a grand daughter of St. Simon. Moreover, his second dam. Lady Sneer well, was bj M.ieheatlM son of Macaroni Intrigue, bv Mask son . of arniv.ili. It remains, of eon i si-. t- Is- seen v. he! her Exford is a really good colt, but the re-semhlaiM-e of his breeding to that of Scatwell is ■ encouraging. — W. Allison is London Sportsman. *
