THE BRUCE LOWE THEORY.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 452, 23 March 1899, Page 15

THE BRUCE LOWE THEORY.

(Concluded.)

The "figure system” of breeding was inaugurated at Mr Frank Reynold’s farm on the Paterson River nearly ten years before Mr Lowe started for England to publish his book. In all that time, the only horse produced there with any pretensions to class, was Melos, the best horse of his speed that I ever saw. But, with Abercorn a year older and Carbine of his own age, he was indisputably over-matched. I know of one horse here in California (Merriwa) who was bred at Tocal under this figure system, and his action was ■imply perfect. He has been in the stud six years, and if his get have ever won better than second money I have not yet heard of it. Frank Reynolds became so upset mentally over the failure of this infallible figure system that he was threatened with paresis, and his brother sent him off to Japan for recuperation. For a year he was not allowed to look into a book.

Another evidence of Mr Lowe’s impractical way of doing things was his importation of Stromboli, a great racehorse, and a good allround performer, but a horse whose pedigree •ould not be verified after the fourth generation. People over there believed Aetna and The Alpaca to be thoroughbred, because no trotting horses had ever been imported thither and their ancestry was necessarily "thoroughbred. But in a strange country like this, nobody was aware of the fact, and would not breed to him. No American would have committed such a solecism. There were also grave doubts (at least, when I was there in 1888) about the paternity of Clieveden, another of Mr Lowe’s, importations, but it is now conceded that he was by Yattendon. Mr Garling, of Fennelly’s Bazaar, offered him to me for £260 as late as May, 1890, so they could not have thought very much of him. Mr Gannon and Mr Fisher, of Brandon, both advised me against purchasing him, and I thought they knew more about Australian horses than I did, so I abandoned all idea of the purchase. And now for the book itself. No man except one endowed w-ith a monumental memory could have originated such a book, for a figure system would necessarily demand more memory than words. He had read over the Stud Book (and with it the Racing Calendar of England) so closely that he discovered that all the winners of the three great classic events of England took their origin from thirty-four mares, most of which were Barbs or daughters of Barb mares. I append a table of these mares from 1 to 34, inclusive, together with the number of classic winners descended from each : —

The above table shows what a student of pedigrees Mr Lowe was, and how he must have “ burnt the midnight ile,” as an old San Jose friend of mine was wont to put it. But his usefulness ended with that, for he was, for a man of his repute, as poor a judge of a horse’s conformation as I can remember. He was a great admirer of Cranbrook, who was as ugly a brute as old Jim Renwick, although an unquestionably great performer. Mr Lowe likewise trusted too much to his memory, and at times allowed it to interfere with his research and warp his judgment. If a man doubts this, let him examine the pedigrees of Sterling, sire of Isonomy, the greatest cup horse of the last forty-five years, and the only sire that has gotten two winners of "the triple crown ” of three-year-olds ; of St. Simon, the only horse that has gotten four winners of the Oaks, and the best stallion since Stockwell himself; and Pocahontas (dam of Stockwell), the only mare that ever gave birth to seven sires of whom four were strictly firstclass. He will find that Mr Lowe places Sterling 34, St. Simon 11, and Pocahontas, “ the mother of the Gracchi,” at 3on his list. When we consider that Stockwell got two winners of the St. Leger where any other horse but Touchstone, Lord Clifden, Sir Peter, and Birdcatcher got one, we should feel like giving first place to the Byerly Turk mare that produced the dam of the True Blues.

Again, Mr Bruce Lowe literally “ slopped over” on Whalebone and Whisker, devoting nearly one-third of his book to extolling the latter at the expense of the former, merely for the sake of familiarising English and American readers with Whisker’s famous descendant, Yattendon, winner of the Sydney Cup. Now, I allow no man to surpass me in admiration of ■Yattendon as a sire and a sire of sires. He outbred every English stallion imported to Australia during his lifetime, and headed the list of winning sires twice after his death. I rank him ahead of English Melbourne, for the reason that Melbourne never got as good a racehorse as Chester, leaving the, unbeaten Grand Flaneur out the question altogether. I rank Grand Flaneur as the great representative three-year-old of the South Continent, j ust as I do Ormonde in England and Henry of Navarre in. America, rating the latter at least five pounds better than Ornament or Requital. And while he devotes at least thirty per cent of his book to Whisker Mr Lowe almost ignores his sire, Waxy, or pauses merely long enough to

“ damn him with faint praise,” and places his top-root mare 18th on the list, in spite of the fact that Waxy’s male line above has won over 30 per cent of the Derbies and St. Legers won in the past eighty years. And yet be places Stockwell at the head of all sires, regardless of the fact that he not only comes from Waxy in the main tail line, but is inbred to him no less than three times. As Stockwell was foaled fifty years ago, three Waxy crosses, then are equivalent to eighteen crosses now. Waxy not only got four winners of the Derby, two of which were Whalebone and Whisker, but he also got from the same mare the stallion Woful, who got three winners of, the One Thousand, two of the Oaks, and one of the St. Leger. But for Waxy there would have been no Glencoe, no Web, no Bay Middleton, and no Pocahontas. Mr Lowe gives Penelope all the credit for these three great brothers — Whalebone, Whisker, and Woful —and says : “ We cannot find the excellence claimed for him (Waxy) by his numerous admirers developed in any other channel. Penelope was bred to Walton and to Election and Rubens, but did not produce a Derby winner to any of them, nor a sire of Oaks and St. Leger winners; nor did her dam Prunella produce a Derby winner to anything but Waxy, to whom she threw the Derby winner of 1809, Waxy Pope, sire of Canteen and the great Skylark, who won the Corinthian Stake at York with 1681 b up. Yet Prunella was mated with four other sires. In looking over the list of Derby winners, I I find only Sir Peter and Waxy that have gotten four, and Herod the despised Herod of Mr Lowe’s book, was the grand-sire of each of these two noted sires Mr Lowe claims Eclipse as the best line beyond cavil, and I agree with him, but, unlike him, I do not attribute the merits of Eclipse to the Darley Arabian, of whose male line he is the sole exponent. Eclipse had twice as much of the blood of the Godolpbin as he had of the Darley Arabian; and had four crosses of the Lister Turk, a horse quite equal to the Darley Arabian, and, in my beief, superior to the Byerley Turk. . - X do not either agree wtUi.M? Lowe on the Derby, St. Leger or Oaks, as the supreme-test o f merit else where would some of our best etallibnc be ? Sultan ran second to Tiresias in the Derby in 1819, and I never saw the name of Tiresias in the pedigree of any great stallion except the sire of Malua. But all the world knows Sultan and his great sous, Glencoe, Bay Middleton, and Clarion.* Sir Hercules ran third in the St. Leger to Bowton and Voltaire, but who ever saw the name of Rowton except in the pedigree of Vi cago ? Yet Sir Hercules is the male line ancestor of over 1000 horses above the rank of a selling plater. Blackioek ran second to Ebor in the St. Leger of 1817, yet nobody hears of Ebor, though Blaeklock’s male line is~now st the head of the English turf through Vedette, Galopin, and St. Simon. Irish Birdcatcher never started for either Derby or St. Leger, yet he ranks next to Touchstone, who won the St. Leger and two Ascot Cups. Lanereos could get no better than third to Charles XII. in the Leger, yet he.got one winner each of the Oaks and St. Leger, and two of the Doncaster Cup, while the dead heater never got a stake horte in all his life. Rataplan ran third to West Australian and lhe Reiver in the St. Leger,*|but JheJ got two racehorses and five

high-class brood mares to the Went’s one. Coming down nearer to our own times, we find that Tristan was unplaced to Iroquois in both the Derby and St. Leger, but, at five years old, could give either Foxhall or Iroquois five pounds and a beating at any distance above a mile and a quarter. So much for classical winners. ‘ ; So it would appear that, in the past fifty-eight-years, more than half the Derby winners and more than one-third of the St. Leger and Oaks races have been won by the get of horses that won no classical event. This is somewhat injurious to Mr Lowe’s theory of classical races as the supreme test of a horse’s merits. I think there are at least four winners of the St. Leger during that period that I have overlooked —Van Troup, Saucebox, Sunbeam, and Ossian—yes, and there’s Nutwith and The lambkin also, which brings the St. Leger list up to 27. The further you search the more firmly you will be persuaded that breeding classical winners from classical winners is no even money shot. I look upon Mr Lowe’s book as one that is entertaining, as it contains many things that I never knew before. But I pity the man who takes it as a guide for breeding operations. One day, out at Banta Anita, Mr Baldwin wanted me to go to work and adapt the American mares to a system similar to that of Mr Bruce Lowe. I told him I had neither the time nor patience to go to work on what not one man in ten could clearly com >• prebend, and that I was not in the habit of advocating propositions in which I did not firmly believe myself. In my belief the late Lord Falmouth forgot more about breeding than poor old Bruce Lowe ever knew in all his sweet and irreproachable life. Look at the great sires that won neither Derby nor St. Leger since 1840, and then tell me 2 whether it is worth while to breed solely from the lines of mares that have originated the so called classical winners. Here’s another table for you : —

Messrs Stephen Sanford ar;d Sons, cf Amsterdam, N.Y., have taken up U L fad, and are going io mate. their mares fc a<co:ding to ihe Bruce

Lowe system. Well, I only hope they will have better luck with Laureate than Frank Reynolds did with Goldsbrough, who is bred very much like Laureate. Those gentlemen are rich, and can well afford to experiment, and as long as people have plenty of money to pay the fiddler, I am in favor of letting them. “ Dance all night, till broad daylight. And go home with the gals in the morning.

No . Name. Q OO o a oo 1 : i • Tregonwell’s Barb mare Burton’s Barb mare ... 14 16 12 42 2 ... 9 16 19 44 3 Dam of the two True Blues ... ... 15 14 13 42 .4 Dayton Barb mare Ola Ebony (daughter of Mass ... 7 11 10 28 5 ey’s Barb)... ... ... ... 9 9 10 28 8 Old Bald Peg ... ... 12 3 2 17 7 Darcy’s Black Legged mare ... ... 9 2 3 14 8 Concyskin’s mare, Bustler ... Old vintner mare ... ... 3 3 4 10 9 ... 5 0 0 5 10 Daughter of Gower stallion ;.. ... 5 3 3 11 11 Sedbury’s Boyal mare ... 4 2 3 . 9 12 Old Montague mare .. ... 1 6 2 9 13 Boyal mare ... 4 2 3 9

14 Oldfield mare Royal mare, dam of Whynot 1 2 3 6 15 3 4 4 11 16 17 Hutton’s Spot mare, Agnes family ... Wharton’s Byerby Turk mare 2 0 2 2 1 3 5 5 18 Old Woodcocks mare 4 3 1 8 19 Davill’s Old Woodcock mare 1 0 3 4 ao Dau. of Gascoigne’s Foreign Horse... 0 2 2 4 21 Moonah Barb mare Belgrade Turk mare, whence Gladiator ... ... 0 3 1 4 22 2 1 0 3 23 24 Hemsfey’s’ Turk mare, whence The 1 3 1 5 Baron 0 0 1 1 25 Brimmer mare 1 1 1 3 26 Dau. of Merlin—Selina ... 1 1 1 3 27 Spanker mare 1 0 1 2 23 Dau. of Place’s White Turk, whence Emilius 1 1 0 2 29 Natural Barb mare ... 0 1 2 3 30 Daughter of Hawker 2 0 0 2 31 Dick Burton’s mare, whence Ruler ... 0 0 1 1 32 Barb mare, dam of Dodsworth 0 1 0 1 33 Bist, to Honeycomb Punch 1 0 0 1 34 Daughter of Hautboy, whence Biringham 0 0 2 2

j Horses’ Name Chief Event Won J? s' 60 <D to tx -■ _. v O 02 ’as o jpo.o oir Hercules Col wick Brighton Cup 1 0 0 1831 Slave Chester Cup ... 1 1 a 1832 Epirus Grand St’d Plate, Ascot ... 1 0 0 1836 Hetman Platoff Northumberland Plate ... 1 0 0 1826 Voltaire DoncastorCup 1 2 01833 Birdcatcher ... Kildare Plate 1 3 i 1835 Melbourne ... Liverpool Cup 2 2 3 1835 Ion 2nd in Derby 1 0 0 1850 .Rataplan Manchester Cup 1 0 0 1859 Adventurer ... City and Suburban 1 0 1 1849 Kingston Goodwood Cup 1 0 ~ 1 : 1857 Buccaneer ... Lincoln Pate ... -.. 1 1 2 1841 Sweetmeat ... Doncaster Cup 1 0 2 1857 Parmesan Queen’s Vase 20 0 1853 Monarque Goodwood Cup 1 1 1 1851 King Tom 2nd in Derby 1 1 3 1851 Marsyas ... .■ .... . 1 0 a 1854 Vedette 2 Doncaster Cups ... 1 0 0 1865 Speculum 4 ... Goodwood Cup .... ... 1 0 0 1854 Leamington ... 2 Chester Cups ...' ; . 1 1 0 1874 Arbitrator ... Liverpool Cup 0 1 01872 Hampton City and Suburban 3 0 1 1873 Springfield ... . Champion Race ... > ... 1 0 : Q. 1861 Scottish Chief Ascot Cup .. # ... 0 i 1 1875 Isonomy . 2 Ascot Cups 2 3 1 1881 St Simon Ascot and Goodw’d Cups... 1 3 4 Total ... • ... ... SO 21 21