But now the gold rush was affecting every portion of inhabited Australia, and the entire country was in a fever. People were too busy endeavouring to become rich quick to trouble very much about the importation of fresh blood stock, so that the list of arrivals between 1850 and 1860 was not nearly so extensive an one as might have been thought or desired. For 1851 was the “annus mirabilis” of Victoria. A Golden Age had dawned. On February 12th of that year Hargraves had washed his first shovelful of dirt near Bathurst, and had found gold in extremely payable quantities. The discovery had stimulated the early prospectors of Port Phillip, and the metal was soon being extracted from the earth by the ton at Clunes, Buninyong, Warrenheip and Ballarat. In September Her Majesty Queen Victoria had signified her assent to the Bill which granted separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales, and the province had now entered upon her career as a separate State. The only skeleton at the feast was the recollection of that dreadful day at the commencement of the year, when the world seemed to be on fire, and the end of all things might possibly be at hand. Black Thursday, February 6th, was a day ever to be remembered. But when the first outburst of the gold fever had somewhat subsided, racing soon began to be more popular than ever before. With quantities of money and loose nuggets to fling about, with a well-developed and constantly indulged in itch for gambling, and with a natural sporting instinct, the diggers soon made things hum in the horse racing line. And now it was that there grew up the absolute necessity for keeping stud records. We have already noticed how inefficiently the stud careers of great mares such as Manto, Cornelia and others had been noted, and how, at this particular period in the history of the turf, it was more urgent than ever that a system should be adopted for preserving all information concerning each brood mare and her progeny, and of maintaining the breed as pure as it was possible to do under the peculiar conditions inseparable from a new country. For things were still what we, in our modern parlance, would call “pretty mixed.” The horse was the main means of progression, railways were short in their mileage, and their branches were scattered and few. The stage coach, buggies and horseback were practically the only means by which the country was traversed, and stock were of necessity still to be driven immense distances to market. With horses in profusion, with paddocks extremely large, with population scattered over a tremendous breadth of lonely country, horse “duffing” was a very tempting proposition to those people whose notions of “meum and tuum” were inclined to be careless and slack. To pick up a good-looking brood mare, in foal or with foal at foot, for nothing, was a temptation impossible to be resisted by many with such a weakness, as they travelled on horseback through the wild, outback places, behind