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BRAMBLES STARTLING CASE Founder of a Great Male Line in This Country Surrounded by Failures and Com ¬ ing from Nowhere He Achieved Greatness BY SALVATOK SALVATOKTlocriitly Tlocriitly AV S Vosburgh and Kxile who be dubbed respectively our Admirable ami ned Doctor of Thoroughbred Literature have contributed to Daily Kaeing Form two connected articles of unusual interest Mr Vosburgh took the initiative by presenting the threeyearold stars nf the American turf grouped by years from 18 4 to 1010 This Kxilc took as the groundwork for his Hace Horse and Sire Worth in which he considered the achievements as sires of the various colts that figured in the Voslmrgh categories The two articles taken together foim a singularly ab ¬ sorbing study for anyone interested in either racing or breeding or both and most particularly the latter latterMr Mr Vosburgh as we all know prefers as a rule to call our attention to facts without endeavoring dogmatically to account for them Kxile ou the other hand prefers to do the accounting and incidentally to exploit those dogmas or doctrines which according to his lights underlie whos who and why whether as race horses or sires Mr Vosburgh has been so long with the game that extended experience many disillusions disappoint ¬ ments and surprises have caused him to eschew theory largely and to rest bin pen upon the feat accomplished In other words he has become gun Hhyof abstractions and is what following that cele ¬ brated American philosopher the late William JaincM one would call a pragma tist in his ideas and beliefs beliefsOil Oil the other hand Exile whose experience lias been much less extended and wh whjdepcnds jdepcnds inlith more largely upon what he derives f runj the study of the records and those of their expositors upon whom he relies is just as decidedly a pofci tivist And this is only in line with the eternaP human process As a rub given an open mind and a desire to see realities stripped of the veils of illusion and through the medium of actual expedi ¬ ence we tend to become more and more uncertain as tiie years accumulate behind us It is the con ¬ crete for which we long and abstract systems cob ¬ webby structuies whoso diaphanous t lire ids are stretched tenuously from a few supporting points forward and back iu and out cease to attract us Whereas to tiie othertype of mind these finespun hypotheses have all the awful authority of law and gospe and nothing so delights them as to bum the midnight mazda in the congenial task of fitting the most unruly facts into circumscribed and inelastic formulas or like Cuvier reconstructing an entire skeleton given a single bone a a starter starterERUDITION ERUDITION VERSUS RESULTS RESULTSMy My experience has been as nothing in comparison with that of Mr Voslmrgh My learning is as nothing in comparison with that of Kxile But In my desire to get at or as nearly at the truth of things I yield nothing to either I admire Mr Vosbuighs open mind and uueqtialod stores of personal knowledge and first baud information while his urbane niid quietly rffoetive and cleaucut style of expressing himself is to me a perennial delight As for Kxile I stand awestruck by his tremendous erudition I sometimes think he could recite the entire Stud Book from memory with all the lore of Ijowc and Gens obbligato if chal ¬ lenged to the feat I gape at his great heaps of fuels and figures piled one upon another like unto Ossa upon Pelion and I wish vainly that I could foM as certain that the sun would rise in the Kast tomorrow morning as he seems of a thousand and one points and issues to me enigmas and myUrtS beyond my ken kenIf If I may be allowed the observation I think not only Kxile but all modern pedigree ex ¬ perts tend constantly to lay too much emphasis upon sire families and in the connection to denounce as failures stallions which themselves good sires failed to found enduring male lines As a matter of fact the number of horses capable of this latter great achievement arc at all times few nor can anybody tell in advance what they are or from just where they will come 1 mean what sources er lines either paternal or mater ¬ nal It is easy to moralize after the fact Hut beforehand As an instance f what I mean let me take a case which might rightly la termed classic I refer to that of Bramble Here was a horse that was a true familyfounder one himself a firstclass sire in his own day and whose blood is going on and on Xow Kxile iu his article above referred to pKiKiunccs Brambles case a triumph for those theories and systems which he aliides by Vet I think no one will contradict me when I affirm that Kxile would today never think of selecting a horse of similar status as Ihe best ou hand for the founding of a sire line lineTHE THE CASE OF BRAMBLES PRODUCE PRODUCEBramble Bramble conies from the Bruce Lowe No tl fam ¬ ily He was foaled In IS7 and previous to him this family had not prpdiiccd a single sire of conse ¬ quence vide the Bruce I wo statistics since 17117 or fur over throequarters of a century It had produced four sires of classic winners in Kngland all back in the eighteenth century not one of which was a success as a sire of sires or the founder of a line of his own This in Kngland Hen in America it had not produced a single sire of repute Neither Brambles dam Ivy Leaf his grauddam Hay Flower his third dam Bay Leaf nor his fourth dam Maria Black produced a sire of any account accountBack Back of Maiia Black herself there follows u suc ¬ cession of three unnamed and unfamed marcs by Smolensko Sir Peter and Mambtinir none of which had ever done anything for their country in the line Continued on second page BRAMBLES STARTLING CASE Continued from tin of endeavor under consideration A Idle to make a bad matter worse Mambrino a son of Engineer by Sampson was a hoi e much farther from being thoroughbred or of pur sang than a whole host of them today so ranked The stain in his pedi ¬ gree was close and dark and there was more than oue of em Aside fiom Hrable the best sire ever produced by a mare by Australian was Falsetto lie came from the No 4 family yet he failed to found u male line as did Bramble though the No 4 family has produced many more not ¬ able sires than did the No 9 The fact is that among the tons of Bonnie Scotland there were many horses which on blood should have succeeded better as family founders than did Unimble but it is equally a fact that none of them ever did didlt lt is of eoursii worse and worse uud more of U when we proceed to the son of Hrnmlilo through which hits lino has be bef f bred on and find hint to hnve boon Hen Brush a horso coming from onu of our native American maternal tap roots and thorefoio In the present liifalutln reckoning not tloroughbicd at all
