The earliest records of English racing commence with the year 1709, and at Newmarket 1716. There have been several racing calendars published at different times, but probably the best and most convenient for office use is the Racing Register published by Bailey Bros., commencing with the first and now filling several large volumes. In the early days very few of the winners even had any pedigree, but after the lapse of about fifty years we find it the rule to insert the sire of all winners, although there were still some exceptions. Under this usage it became possible in the course of time to establish the leading facts on the paternal side, and thus the work of the stud-book compiler was greatly facilitated. Those racing calendars, although intended merely to serve the convenience of men who bet their money, caring nothing for blood, served the more permanent and valuable purpose of fixing the paternal lines in the genealogy of the English race horse. In 1786 Mr. William Pick, of York, England, published “A Careful Collection of all the Pedigrees it was then Possible to Obtain,” thus antedating Mr. Weatherby’s “Introduction” by five years. In 1785 Mr. Pick had commenced the publication of a racing calendar called “The Sportsman and Breeder’s Vade Mecum,” which was continued a good many years. These little annual volumes were well received, and they were the forerunners of Pick’s Turf Register, the first volume of which was brought out in 1703. This was the same year that the first volume of Weatherby’s Stud Book appeared, and there was a sharp rivalry between the two authors, not merely as two men, but as representing two divisions of the country. Mr. Pick was a Yorkshire man and Mr. Weatherby was a Londoner. Yorkshire claimed to be the “race-horse region” of England, and the Southrons were ready to fight rather than concede that claim. This rivalry survived two or three generations of racing men, and it is a question whether it has yet subsided. In the north Pick was the authority and in the south, Weatherby.