The next point to which exception will be taken is the conclusion reached as to the character and influence of the exotics that were introduced in the reign of Charles II. These exotics have been designated in a general way, by the phrase “foundation stock,” which has been introduced more out of deference to the popular understanding than to its legitimate and true meaning. For the real “foundation stock” we must look away back in the centuries, long before Charles was born. The analysis of the data furnished by Mr. Weatherby as “foundation stock” clearly shows that the Turks predominated in numbers, but, possibly, the Barbs in influence. The Arabian element, in both numbers and influence, seems to be practically _nil_, and this is the “gist of my offending.” The one great horse—Godolphin Arabian—exerted a greater and more lasting influence upon the English race horse than any other of his century and probably than all the others of his century, and his blood is wholly unknown. Fortunately, a few years ago I was able to unearth his portrait and prove it a true portrait, and in that picture we must look for his lineage. He was a horse of great substance and strength on short legs, with no resemblance whatever to a race horse. About fifty years after his death Mr. Stubbs, the artist, who prided himself upon representing the character of a horse rather than his shape, came across this picture, from which he made an “ideal” copy of what he thought the horse should have been, which is a veritable monstrosity. These two pictures will appear together in their proper places, where they can be leisurely studied, and the honest and the dishonest compared.
The American race horse is the lineal descendent of the English race horse, and like his ancestor he is very largely dependent upon the “native blood” for his existence as a breed. The first English race horse was imported into Virginia about 1750, and he there met a class of saddle mares that had been selected, bred, trained, and raced at all distances up to four-mile heats, for nearly a hundred years. These mares were the real maternal foundation stock upon which the American race horse was established, as a breed. The phrase “native blood” is here used as applying to the animals and their descendants, that were brought over from England at and soon after the plantation of the American colonies. Up to the time of the Revolution there were but few racing mares brought over—as many as you could count on your fingers—but they must have been marvelously prolific, for thirty or forty filly foals each would hardly have accommodated all the animals with pedigrees tracing to them. Quite a number of our greatest race horses and sires of forty or fifty years ago traced to some one of these mares through links that were wholly fictitious. Indeed, from the period of the Revolution, and even before that, down to our own time, the pernicious and dishonest habit of adding fictitious crosses beyond the second or third dam became the rule in the old American families, and an animal with a strictly honest pedigree was the exception. In spreading abroad these dishonest fictions as true pedigrees, the press—perhaps not venally, but ignorantly—was made the active agent. Whenever a rogue could get a pedigree into print, however absurd, nothing could prevent its spread as the truth. The early sporting and breeding press was not in the hands of men remarkable for conscience and still less remarkable for knowledge. But the worst of all was the “professional pedigree maker” who knew so many things that he never knew, and stopped at nothing. In all this dirty work of manufacturing pedigrees there is a very striking resemblance between the awkward efforts of the early English and the early American pedigree maker. This whole topic of the ignorance of the press and the dishonesty of the pedigree makers will be considered fully in its proper place. Fortunately, although still far from perfect, the methods and care in the preservation of the true lineage of the race horse in our own day have been greatly improved. The many efforts to improve the American race horse by introducing fresh infusions of Saracenic blood will receive due attention, especially as they have nearly all been made within the newspaper period, and their uniform and complete failure will not be new to American horsemen.