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AMERICAN BLOOD FAILLES Why Lexington Male Line Faded and Female Held Family Crest Was Reached With WithHim Him Others Which Failed Bonnie Scotlands Live On BY SALTATOIU SALTATOIUThere There recently appeared in Daily Tlacing Form the tabulation of the pedigree of a horse now racing well on the Pacific Coast said to be the only one descended in direct male line from Lexington and the hope has been expressed that through him the life of this line once so dominant may be prolonged and its threatened extinction for fortime time at least averted The hope is per ¬ haps a forlorn one in which the wish has been found father to the thought Only the future can decide the outcome But if so slender a thread can be made the connecting link between two imposing structures it will be another of those romances of breeding which give color to its story and lend to it much of its perennial allure allureWhy Why did the Lexington male line fail to carry on We have been told why and yet again why over and over again But there still remain many whys and where ¬ fores to be discussed and thought over overThe The readiest explanation and the one most widely accepted was that he was a progeni ¬ tor the carrying power of whose blood through a freak or decree of nature was destined to prove paramount through ma ¬ ternal channels channelsAgain Again he is figured to us as the crest of a great breeding wave which for three quarters of a century had swept over the American turf carrying all before it but at last as all waves however great and mighty combed over and disappeared disappearedStill Still again we are assured that the lapse of his line was due to the fact that he was not pur sang that in his ancestry there were several lines which went to the woods and that in competition with the truly thor ¬ oughbred horses which at that era began to be imported in increasing numbers his sons would fail They were not the fittest hence could not survive surviveLEXINGTON LEXINGTON MALE LIXE FAILURES FAILURESAn An atmosphere of probability envelops the first two of these contentions and one of plausibility the third The question has as a matter of fact never been so deeply and thoroughly studied as it might be and we lack much information which carefully com ¬ piled authentic data might afford us De ¬ spite the fact that his male line proved un ¬ able to contend successfully against its rivals it is improbable that any serious critic will disallow the claim of Lexington to be called the most proponent thorough ¬ bred stallion that America has thus far produced producedSome Some day perhaps a studious soul will sit down to the task of thoroughly studying and giving presentation to the precise man ¬ ner in which this prepotency was displayed Such a work is one worthy of a firstclass talent supported by a sincere devotion devotionSome Some curious problems would confront the analyst One of them is this Why were the sons of Lexington so far superior to his daughters as performers the daughters so superior to the sons as producers If the feminine line was so much the stronger why did it fail in this inexplicable manner Many of the Lexington mares were fine and some of them grand racers but class for class they did not approach his sons In this respect they presented a striking contrast to the case of the Glenelgs The Glenelg mares were wonders on the turf the Glenelg stallions few of them conspicuous and at the Btud the mares likewise outbred the stal ¬ lions No son of Glenelg made a sire of distinction but his daughters gave us some great ones beginning with Troubadour TroubadourLEXINGTONS LEXINGTONS DAUGHTERS GREAT GREATThat That the sons of Lexington were placed at a disadvantage by the immense success of his daughters is true These daughters had the advantage of being bred to horses of the highest stamp Leamington Bonnie Scotland Australian and the like The sons of Lexington must have been not only as great but greater than their sire in order to have successfuly withstood such compe ¬ tition As a matter of fact they were placed at a disadvantage with their sire who found a golden cross with the daugh ¬ ters of Glencoe a marvelous tribe of ma ¬ trons There were many sons of Lexing ¬ ton in service but when the class of marcs they served is assessed it will be found that it was distinctly inferior to that which their sire or their rivals Leamington Bonnie Scotland Australian etc enjoyed access to toThe The wave of blood to whose crest I have likened Lexington was that of Sir Archy and his sire Diomed Indications point to the fact that the thoroughbred breed in America had reached the point of saturation so far as this blood was concerned and was no longer able to carry it as a dominant strain not only but a predominant one after Lexingtons day The interbreeding of his sons upon mares deeply bred in the blood was too great a handicap for them The number of marcs at this era in America that were without this blood was negligible It permeated almost everything When it was mingled with the blood of a Leamington a Bonnio Scotland an Australian a Phaeton the results were wonderful But it could no longer be bred back upon itself without de ¬ generacy resulting Like the dominant fami ¬ lies of the human race Torks Plantagenets Tudors in England Stuarts in Scotland Valois and Bourbons in Prance Medici in Italy Hohenzollern in Germany Hapsburg In Austria it abode its destined hour and went its way wayWhen When we view it in the long historic ret ¬ rospective we observe that it endured much longer than most of its rivals The Leam ingtons faded amazingly early The Bonnie Scotlands live on through but a single strain the Australians likewise And none of these families by and large has attained any ¬ thing like the national dominance that its predecessor so long enjoyed enjoyedIt It is beginning to bo apparent that St Simon in England is going to prove another Continued on twelfth page AMERICAN BLOOD FAILURES Continued from elerenth page Lexington unless something happens and that quickly to save the day for his family Its rapid disappearance during the past dec ado presents a case of decadence without parallel in breeding history Its debacle cir ¬ cumstances considered is even more im ¬ pressive than that of Lexington For its opportunities were incomparably better and every circumstance seemed to conspire to favor it But no son of St Simon has ap ¬ proached him as a sire and the grandsons class for class are inferior to the sons sonsWe We cannot understand these things We cannot explain them To quote Fabre the great French naturalist Life has unfath ¬ omable secrets Human knowledge will be erased from the archives of the world before we possess the last word that a gnat has to say to us Success is for the loud talkers the selfconvinced dogmatists ev ¬ erything is admitted on condition that it be noisily proclaimed proclaimedLet Let us throw off this sham and recognize that in reality we know nothing about any ¬ thing if things are probed to the bottom Scientifically nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy mans curiosity Hypothesis follows hypothesis the theoretic rubbish heap accumulates and truth ever eludes us To know how not to know might well be the last word of wisdom wisdomWhat What breeders as well as all other men need to realize is that while organizing their knowledge they must also organize their lack of it and make no pretense of going farther than they really have in their pentration of the mysteries of nature When this rule is not followed there is one invari ¬ able result charlatanry the reign of hocus pocus instead of reason the blind leading the blind
