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RUGGED AMERICAN MARES ARE BEST No Exact Science for the Production of the Great Race Horse of Today Bl CHARLES B BKOSSMAN BKOSSMANNow Now that racing has begun at Lexington demon ¬ stration by actual performance will take the place of argument in Kentucky as to the merits of the different racing families The ones that get to the wire first and win the money will be the fashionable and popular families to breed into next spring Sterling performance will make fashionable tho sire and dam of the winner A truly great horse will often appear whose sire and dam have hitherto attracted little attention but just as soon as a champion apinars there is always a rush to procure some of the kinsfolk How often has it been noticed that a yearling that sold for a small price turned out to be the sensational horse of his year and his brothers and sisters would then bring ex ¬ orbitant prices on account of the relationship and scarcely ever realize expectations If from gen oration to generation the mares from the same family produce numerous winners they will always be popular and their produce will sell profitably whether their ancestry traces back to the royal stables of Queen Anne or to the cabin of some early settler along the edge of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia Any mare now in our American Stud Book is well enough bred if properly mated to produce a sensational winner and found a new great racing family Unexpected results often follow when least looked for There are those flo would have ns believe that breeding the thoroughbred was an exact science and tlmt according to formula an equation can be produced the same as an alge ¬ braic proposition Eclipse plus Herod plus Matchcm equals race horse horseIt It would be a disastrous tiling for the breeding in ¬ terests of the country if this was a fact the man with the most money could gather all of the best horses and no one else would have a chance As it is every man in this country has equal oppor ¬ tunity on the tnrf and many of the influential successful prosperous turf magnates started from a small beginning To quote from an ancient au ¬ thority The casuist may with consistency inquire What is a thoroughbred horseV The term is ac ¬ cepted conventionally to signify a horse whose pedi ¬ gree can be traced through many generations the numbers of which have signalised themselves on the turf or have established themselves as progenitors of superior race horses v RUGGED AMERICAN THOROUGHBREDS THOROUGHBREDSOur Our ancestors in this country long before the Revolutionary War developed a breed of race horses from imported and Oriental stock that they con ¬ sidered second to none and free from many of the defects attributed to the cimate of England The pedigrees of many of these horses were not recorded because there was no stud book and during the Revolutionary War people had other things to think about consequently many pedigrees were lost but the stock kept right on winning races and have continued to do so for about two hundred years Therefore no one can say with assurance that these mares were not thoroughbred although it cannot now be proved that they were They have estab ¬ lished themselves in turf history and it is honor enough to be a descendant from any one of these great old American mares that have made turf history family number or no family number numberThere There never has been a horse in England that has gained more celebrity than Eclipse And justly so for he has one of the most brilliant records ol any horse in the history of the British turf The breeders in that country have bred to Eclipse lines almost to the exclusion of every other and some of their best race horses and sires trace in all male lines to Eclipse We on the other hand have had a judicious supply of this blood at all times and in addition we have had more and better Herod blood than can be found in any other country in the world Then too our Matchem blood comes from the best of sources therefore England needs for an outcross just what we have in abundance and the best way for an English sire to become famous is to breed him to these stoutj rugged American mares and the English marcs to the American stal ¬ lions But coining buck to Eclipse a horse that has done as much as any other to make the Eng ¬ lish tnrf renowned was considered a shortbred horse in his day by old turf writers and would not now if lie were here be considered fashionable by some of our number propagandists The dam of Eclipse Spiletta never started but once and was beaten Ills fourth dam The Old Montague mare is recorded as breeding unknown The Godolphin one of his greatgrandsires was pur ¬ chased out of a water cart in Paris and nothing whatever was known of his breeding When Eclipse died OKelly his owner hired a poet to fling defiance to his detractors one of the verses running thus thusTrue True oer the tomb in which this favorite lies No vaunting boast appears of lineage good goodYet Yet the Turf Registers bright page defies The race of Herod to show better blood bloodTherefore Therefore it will ba seen that some of the good old English horses have n musty genealogy the same as some of ours But what difference does it make What the people want and demand is winners today and it matters little whether they have family numbers or not just so they can get to the wire first The family will then become fashionable
