view raw text
ENGLANDS PRESENT STAR Selene Called the Best Small Filly Since the Days of Wheel of Fortune. As for Selene I think we have not seen her equal as a small filly since Wheel of Fortune. In conformation Selene is as near perfection as you can ever expect. Her depth and forehand are specially remarkable, and with it all there is perfect symmetry, length and balance. This season has been an extraordinary one indeed for three-year-old fillies. So many really good ones have never been known in my time, and of them all Selene seems to be the very best. She is estimated as being seven pounds better than Pogrom and four pounds in front of Soubriquet, but that was before her smashing victory at Hurst Park, when Simon Pure and Captain Pracasse failed most signally to extend her. Her sire, Chaucer, has got many good ones, but never one so good as this, and he, being a son of St. Simon and Canterbury Pilgrim, was naturally equipped for great stud success, only he is on the small side, though not so his son, Stedfast. Anyhow, Selene has come perfectly true to the multurn in parvo type, and I should think that Lord Derby was never better pleased than to see her and Pharos both his own breeding win as they did on Saturday. There have been very good fillies of small stature since Wheel of Fortune, and Love in Idleness was notable among them, but I question whether she was quite so good as Selene. At any rate the owners of either are lucky men, and both mares are eminently suitable to make successful matrons, which, perhaps, Wheel of Fortune was not. Tranquil, by Swynford, out of Serenissima dam of Selene, is a very grand filly on a much larger scale than the three-year-old. She will probably develop into one of the very best of her sex, and it will be noticed that she, too, doubles the Pilgrimage blood, as both Swynford and Chaucer are sons of Canterbury Pilgrim, though no two horses could be more unlike one another. Chaucer, by the way, is now twenty-two years old, but age has not interfered wTith his successes. Venetia, the four-year-old sister to Selene, was quite a good two-year-old, but failed to win in her three-year-old season. It is well for the fame of St. Simon that one of his few surviving sons has Selene to his credit this year, and it should bo also remembered that Silver Urn, winner of the One Thousand Guineas this year, is also a grand-daughter of St. Simon. W. Allison in London Sportsman.
