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AGES OF GREAT ENGLISH SIRES Rumor has it that the great English sire Poly-melus is near the end of his career. Of great sires and service ages Allison writes in the Sportsman: "Galopin, when he was twenty-two, got Disraeli, winner of the Two Thousand Guineas, and there are some splendid foals of this year by Sundridge, sired when he, too, was twenty-two years old. Miss Ronald, the dim of the American record holder, Minto II., by Sundridge, was bought last year in the South of France, to mate with Sundridge again, and she is standing to the first service by the old hoise. She is a daughter of Bay Ronald. Galli-nule was twenty-seven when he sired Toiloisk, and Melton, in his last season, when he was twenty-eight, got fourteen foals, three of which won races as two-year-olds. There were eleven Touchstone foals in 1859, that famous sire having been foaled in 1831. Two of these foals became winning two-year-olds, the better being the speedy Soapstone, and one developed into the useful brood mare Touch and Go. "Sir Hercules, which was foaled in 1820, had three foals in 1855, and one of these won as a two-year-old. His wcll-rcmcmbcred sons, the brothers Gunboat and Lifeboat, were foaled in 1854 and 1855, respectively. They were fine stayers, winning many Queens Plates, and Lifeboat won the Great Metropolitan Stakes at Epsom in 185.. Such instances of stallions having sired good winners late in life are not many, and I only mention them to indicate that whatever if anything has gone wrong with Polymelus, it can hardly be a question of old age."
