| Horse Breeder's Handbook,
Fifth Edition, 1898
Containing introductory comments on the pedigree and performances of seventy-eight of the principal stallions advertised to cover in Great Britain and Ireland during the season 1898, etc. together with a history of the rise and progress of the British stud including the tabulated pedigrees and full particulars of fifty of the most famous blood-sires from whom it has had its origin embellished with portraits of Benvenuto, Cabin Boy, Carbine, Carnage, Donovan, Endurance, Galopin, Greenlawn, Isinglass, Kendal, Kilwarlin, Ladas, Oakwood, Orme, Persimmon, St. Frusquin, St. Simon, Savile, Stockwell, and Worcester. Jos. Osborne ("Beacon") Forest green cloth covered boards, spine titled gilt, front cover titled gilt with a decorative gilt horse portrait. 340+ pgs. paginated in sections. Folding pedigree tables. Sepia plates w/tissue guards. Head and tail of spine rubbed, tips rubbed through to the boards, small stains ink stains to covers, owners signature on the verso of the first free endpaper and the top margin of the title page. Binding tight, a very nice copy. Valuable resource for information on 19th century sires in text and pedigree. "Beacon" was an antagonist to Bruce Lowe's work (see 'Breeding Racehorses by the Figure System', Bruce Lowe) : "Was it not a little presumptuous on the part of Mr. Lowe, after paying a visit to America to see what information he could pick up from breeders in the United States , to come all the way from the Antipodes to Europe to teach English and Irish studmasters how to breed racehorses - men whose careful mating of bloodstock the world chiefly owes the fine horses that are now to be found everywhere . . . ? . . . He assumed many things, without his assumptions having any foundation in fact." |