their mobs of cattle and droves of sheep. The bushrangers, those unfortunate “gentlemen of the road,” too, required a constant supply of horse flesh, and the better looking, and the better bred, their cattle were, so much the more advantageous it was for them. Troubadour, Mr. C. M. Lloyd’s well-known racing stallion, is reported to have been stolen by Ben Hall on three separate occasions, but was always recaptured. So many skirmishes had the old horse been in when ridden by Hall that, on the death of the horse, a post mortem was held, when seven bullets were discovered in various portions of his frame. Everyone has read Rolf Boldrewood’s inimitable book “Robbery Under Arms.” The story of horse stealing and cattle duffings is splendidly told in its pages, and the description of the stock concealed in “The Hollow” by Starlight and his gang is well calculated to make the mouths of all thoroughbred enthusiasts water, and almost to cause the best of us to covet our neighbour’s horse. Sappho, the greatest and most successful colonial-born brood mare that has ever been seen, was “lifted,” I have been informed, on at least three occasions, and Mr. George Lee had many long, weary rides whilst tracking the footprints of those that led her captive. Some of the most distinguished matrons of our stud book were either stolen or strayed mares whose owners never recovered them, and whose new masters, as a matter of course, dared not acknowledge their pedigrees, even if they had them. There was “Black Swan, by Yattendon from Maid of the Lake (bred by Captain Russell, of Ravensworth, but whose pedigree cannot be ascertained).” Her stock, inasmuch as they can win at all distances, at weight-for-age, and can stay, are palpably from no half-bred strain. There was Dinah, bought, it is believed, out of a travelling mob by the late Mr. James Wilson, of Victoria, and certainly as clean bred as Eclipse. Her descendants include, in a long list, Musidora, Newhaven, G’naroo and Briseis. There was Mr. C. Smith’s Gipsy, said to have been by Rous’ Emigrant, but whose dam was never identified. There was Lilla, whose granddam was a mare by Toss, “bred by the Rev. W. Walker, near Bathurst,” and there was Sappho herself, “by Marquis, her dam a grey mare by Zohrab, granddam a brown mare of unknown pedigree.” And then, too, there was Old Betty. Breeders would give untold sums of money to discover, with no possibility of error, the blood lines of these famous mares. It is to be feared, however, that it is an impossibility in each of these cases cited here, and every year that glides past adds to the apparently insurmountable difficulties which lie in the way. But it was to prevent such occurrences in the future that the first volumes of the Victorian, the New South Wales and the New Zealand Stud Books were compiled. Mr. William Levy essayed the task in Victoria in 1859. In N.S.W. the first production saw daylight at about the same time, and in New Zealand, breeders followed suit.