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In Praise of Gray BY SALVATOB The most picturesque, picture that Euro-. pean racing thus far has sent across to us this season is the finish of the Grand Prix de Paris, in which Filibert de Savoie is shown literally flying past the post with daylight between him and Checkmate and Le Capucin, which was almost neck and neck in their struggle for second honors. The action in the photo is superb it gives one a wonderful impression of wonderful speed. But much of this intensity of effect would be lost but for the fact that the winner, son of Isard II. and Yolande, by Gardefeu, is a gray horse. His form, in all its details, stands out cameolike from the mass of other forms and figures behind and around it, and the impact which it makes upon the vision is tremendous. Where did Filibert de Savoie which is half-brother on the maternal side of Eugene de Savoie, winner of the Prix du President de la Republique three years ago get his color? I do not propose to weary the reader with those wearisome and reconditely interminable theoretics which the "pigmenta-tionists" have for years past been pouring over the breeding problem, like a sort of acrid sauce unpiquante. Let them "go to" Filibert and his coat-color as they will. For after they have done with him if ever the net result will be "words, words words" and nothing more. ORIGINS OF HIS COLOR. Coming down to the crude levels of common sense, we may say that Filibert de Savoie inherited his color from his sire, for Isard II. is also a gray, and he in turn by still another, Le Samaritaine, and he by still another, Le Sancy ; where the uniformity stops, in the direct male line, as Atlantic, Le Sancys sire, was a chestnut. However, had Filibert de Savoie descended from still another succession of progenitors, on his top line, he still might have been a gray; for his dam, Yolande, was also gray and the daughter of a gray dam Mmo. de Maintenon. The Madame was, moreover, a daughter of Le Sancy, the gray paternal great-grandsire of the winner of the Grand Prix of 1923. As the son of a gray sire and a gray dam, had Filibert de Savoie been anything but a gray he had been a lusus natuae. The pig-mentationists have, I believe, dug up a few cases in which the offspring of a gray sire and a gray dam were not gray, but the rarity of such marvels is greatly in excess of that of white blackbirds or female Derby winners. GLAD JLE IS A GRAY. For myself, I am not unduly exercised as to the "everlasting why" of Filiberts gray-ness. The cause in this case does not so much interest me as the effect. I am glad he is a gray because that fact so immensely helps the picture that he makes not only figuratively, but actually. When the gray horse faded out of the American racing spectacle as to all intents and purposes he has it suffered beyond computation in its spectacular values. The public, which so delights in the racing spectacle, loves the gray horse above all others because of his salience. It requires no binoculars to keep track of him nothing but the naked eye. And those who have spent a lifetime at the race course are well aware that the roar which goes up or used to when a gray horse made play, was unlike any other. When, in that long ago that now seems so far away, Wagner and Grey Eagle ran their historic matches, while Wagner was the financial favorite, it was Grey Eagle with which the crowds sympathies were intrusted. When he won the first heat in the second match, the ovation that he received far surpassed any that were tendered Wagner upon his ultimate victories in both events; and when the son of Woodpecker broke down in the third heat of the last race the groans that went up showed where the spectators hearts were. These were two wonderful race horses. Their blood is still demonstrating its prepotency. But of the two, as a romantic figure, such as gives to racing that thrill which nothing else can give, it was the vanquished, not the victor, that lived on in the memories of the spectators, and en- dures for those of us today who can behold them only through imaginations lenses. As for me, however, I have been a bit more fortunate. When a small child, as I sat at my mothers knee, one of the stories I used oftenest to ask her to repeat to me was that of how she had seen Grey Eagle in her girlhood. Not in the famous race, but in after years, when, a famous stallion, he was exhibited at a great fair, ridden by his owners graceful daughter, garbed in a dark blue riding habit and from whose hat a long white feather floated. The love of a horse was transmitted to me from both sides of the house and both my parents, who had seen many great ones, were always glad to recall their memories of them for me. But among them all it was the picture of Grey Eagle that most moved my childish fancy, and my sadness when the stories of his defeats by Wagner were narrated, ending with his break-down on the course and disappearance from it forever, was as condign as if I had myself been there to see and bewail it. We have had some great gray runners since Grey Eagle, but never another of his rank and it will soon be a hundred years since he was foaled. In the brave days of old the color was far from uncommon. It is still quite often met with among Americas harness race horses, but from our thoroughbreds it has well-nigh vanished. And this brings me to another subject my pleasure, for this reason, at the approaching advent, in this country, of Stefan the Great. YALUE OF STEFATT THE GREAT. Mr. Coussell has denominated-him the most valuable stallion imported or purchased for importation since Rock Sand. That is a rather large order, I think, in view of such other horses in that category as Prince Palatine, Negofol, Archaic, Pharose, etc. ; but letting it pass, of his value there can be no doubt. For he represents the line which has given France and England its "gray wonders" of the present and the recent past. He will bring to this country the electric current with which his sire, The Tetrarch, seems to have vivified the British thoroughbred as that breed has been vivified by ho other progenitor in decades, and along with it, may we not hope, some future "gray wonders" of our own? Aside from his appeal to the eye, the gray horse bears, as does no other, the cachet of the romantic. The purest artistocrat of the Desert is the gray the gray that, as will The Tetrarch and Stefan the Great, grow snow white as the years thicken upon him. Why Death was ever mounted upon "the pale horse" I could never fathom, unless it was to project still farther his own tonality. For with life at its most vibrant,, beneath the blazing suns of the tropic and elsewhere, he is and always has been, the most livingly associated. WASHINGTON LIKED GRAY HORSES. The "Man of Destiny" bestrode always of choice a white or gray steed. And it was the admiration of Washington for the gray offspring of the so-called "Lindsay Arabian" that caused the transfer of that so romantic steed, during the Revolutionary era, from New England to Virginia, where his blood entered basically into many a pedigree of today. Gray horses are notoriously enduring and long-lived. Nothing else in equine form is so beautiful, when it possesses beauty of form. "A good horse is always a good color," but gray, white and their variants, the blue, strawberry and steel roans, have a color value that, purely on the side of the picturesque, is unrivaled. As modern life tends constantly to eliminate the picturesque, replacing by the stereotyped, the uniform and the standardized, nothing can be more welcome than anything which will add a fresh touch, if from an old paint pot, of that priceless quality. If Stefan the Great can impart it, he will justify Mr. Coussells words in a way which, perhaps, that critic did not contemplate when he wrote them, but one nevertheless "devoutedly to be wished."
