The circulation of the Old Spirit was largely in the Southern States, and the war destroyed it, in 1861. _Porter’s Spirit_ having but little money and still less brains, died about the same time. This left Mr. Wilkes in open possession of the field, and his remarkably trenchant articles on the conduct of the war gave _Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times_ a very wide circulation, even among those who cared nothing for sporting matters. At the same time he was fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Charles J. Foster, an able writer on horse subjects, and a very industrious and capable man in managing and discussing affairs connected with the horse. Some years later, Mr. Wilkes dropped his own name from the title of his paper, and not long afterward he added twenty-five or thirty years to its age by changing the numbers so as to cover the period of the original _Spirit of the Times_ founded by William T. Porter. The old sporting publications, one and all, maintained the view, so far as they ever had any view to maintain, that all that was of any value in the American horse, for whatever purpose, had come down to us from the Arabian through the English race horse. Their value, therefore, consists wholly in the naked statistics which they contain. The first attempt made in this country, in the direction of publishing a stud book of American race horses, was the product of Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, an eccentric and apparently not well-balanced Irishman, who was a resident of North Carolina. This book, which purported to be a “first” volume, was very remarkable in many respects, two or three of which I will enumerate. The prevailing absence of dates and all means by which the truth or falsity of a pedigree could be determined; the astounding number of crosses given, even to the _immediate_ descendants of imported sires; the multitude of animals never heard of before nor since, with pedigrees extended a dozen crosses; the absence of many animals that everybody had heard of. This book had been in print about thirty years before I ever saw it, and the first impression it made on my mind was that the author was “clean daft.” At the same time, through all his work there was a “method in his madness,” going to show the care he had taken to exclude or suppress any little fact that might lead to detection and exposure. As an illustration of his methods I will take the following pedigree, at random, as given by him and copied, literally, by Mr. Bruce, following the particular form of the latter: CENTAUR, b. h. foaled 1767, bred by ——; owned in Virginia, got by imported Stirling (Evans’) (foaled 1762). 1st dam by imp. Aristotle (imported 1764). 2d dam by imp. Dotterel. 3d dam by imp. David (imported 1763). 4th dam by imp. Ranter (imported 1762). 5th dam by imp. Othello (imported 1755). 6th dam by imp. Childers (imported 1761). 7th dam an imported, thoroughbred mare.