view raw text
FADE OUT OF THE SIMON LINE BY SALVATOR. To a breeder one of the most interesting statistical items that has recently appeared in Daily Eacing Form was that which gave a list of all English winning sires whose get had won ,500 during the present season up to August 14. This was particularly informing because it gave not only the number of winners, the number of races and the amount of money won by each horses offspring it also gave the breeding of each stallion, thereby allowing the analyst an intelligent conspectus of the standing of the various families to the date mentioned. Some time ago I wrote a few paragraphs about the curious way in which the St. Simon line was losing its former high estate, its virtual dominance of the situation. These were based on no exact statistics, but merely the fruit of cursory observation. At that time I had no idea of the extraordinary condition that actually prevailed. Canvassing the list of winning sires of 1922 above described, I find that of the twenty leaders but three belong to the St Simon family, viz., Juggernaut, which stands sixth ; Charles OMalley dead, which stands twelfth, and Lomond, which stands seventeenth. Of these three horses, Juggernaut is a son of St. Simon, while Charles OMalley and Lomond were or are grandsons, both of them being by the same sire, Desmond, son of St. Simon. ONLY EIGHT ST. SIMONS. Proceeding on down the list, I then summarized the complete roster of horses whose get had won 0,000 or more, and found these to number fifty-three. Of these fifty-three sires but eight are of the St. Simon line, the five additional ones falling in the division below the leading twenty being: Chaucer, which stands twenty-first ; Stedfast, twenty-eighth ; Simon Square, forty-first ; Rossen-dale, forty-second, and Irishman, fiftieth. Chaucer is a son of St. Simon and Stedfast a son of Chaucer; Simon Square and Ross-endale are both sons of St. Simon, while Irishman is a son of Desmond, above named as St. Simons son. Musing upon these "facts and figures" the first thought is: How astonishing, when one recalls the situation a decade ago, at which time, as had been the case for over a decade before, the St. Simons had virtually been sweeping everything before them ; that when the horses of that line had been deducted from the winning sires list, it looked worse "shot to pieces" than would a "Court Circular" from which the names of all members of the peerage had been expunged! AN UNPRECEDENTED "FADE-OUT." Such a fading out of a dominant line is, I think, without precedent in breeding history. One could moralize upon it, and attempt explanations of it, to the extent of columns. But in the end it would still remain inexplicable and unaccountable one of those strange phenomena through which Dame Nature is eternally serving notice upon "poor humanity" that we can at best do little better than make more or less happy hits or clever guesses in our endeavors to get at the how and why of heredity. The peculiar thing about this fading away of the St. Simons is further emphasized by the almost total inability the blood has shown to "carry" beyond the second generation. Although St. Simon, if now alive, would be forty-two years old, he has not a single great-grandson, or great-great-grandson, potent enough to continue the task of upholding the prestige of the blood. We do find such horses, belonging to families headed by other horses that were St. Simons contemporaries, so we are obliged to believe that his line has simply "run out" it amounts to that from sheer inability to "carry on" and no other reason. Otherwise there would now be a group of young sires coming on to which we might look for achievements in keeping with those of the earlier generations of their house. Is the St. Simon blood, in the male line, fading away in England for the same reason that the blood of Lexington faded away in America i. e., because, so far as our evidence enables us to judge, the "point of saturation" has been reached and the breed requires something else, strains whose germ-plasms will bring into the combinations made, elements not specifically better, but which seems, in heredity often much more important different? The fading out of the St Simons, however, is more closely paralleled on this side of the Atlantic by that of the Leamingtons. Leamington immediately succeeded Lexington as Americas champion sire which position, incidentally, he won largely because of his success when crossed upon Lexingtons daughters,- In competition with him the sons of Lexington were badly worsted, and so they were in competition with his sons. Many turfmen with good memories can recall the period when the sons of Leamington were the "latest cry" among our breeders. He who had a first-class one was a man much to be envied. Two of them, Longfellow and Iroquois, became "leading sires," and a whole shoal f others were "there or thereabouts" such horses as Enquirer, Eolus, Sensation, Reform, Onondaga, Powhattan, Hyder Ali, Lelaps, Stratford, etc., etc A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS. The "fade-out" began when the sons of these horses took up the task of "carrying on." A scattering one, here and there, begot a sensational race horse, but as a whole they proved disappointments. Falsetto was probably the best of them, and along with him might be mentioned Leonatus, Knight of Ellerslie, Riley, The Bard and a few others. -And after them silence. The scepter had passed to other houses, never to return. Ironic fate, fond of turning ducks into swans and vice-versa, has decreed that the only important channel through which the blood of Leamington should filter into present-day pedigrees should be because of the ability of another line to "help it along" i. e., that of Bonnie Scotland. The Leamingtons and the Bonnie Scotlands were contemporaries and all "severe critics" preferred the former tribe. The latter, in comparison, was considered decidedly inferior, especially in the ability to "go a distance." Yet it has lived on, and because one of the links in the chain that has kept it alive is Ben Brush, and Ben Brush happened to be from a mare by Reform, son of Leamington, the blood or the last-named progenitor is today still with us in a "fashionable" way. But a few generations ago it was taken for granted that in all probability, if the blood of Bonnie Scotland live on it would be because something "stronger" like that of Leamington, for instance: would give it a lift on the journey. Of course there is always this to be remembered that altogether too much stress is, as a general thing, placed upon "male lines" and "sire families" by thoroughbred and other breeders. If we had any keen historical sense, any faculty for really judging the future by the past, we would know only too well that any male line, however dominant and well intrenched it may appear, is liable to "do a fade-out" in the next few seasons, and that, having once faded, only a miracle of which this is not the age will ever bring it back; while, at the same time, a new line of progenitors is liable to pop up from an unexpected quarter.
