CHAPTER XXXI.

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED.

Early trotting and pacing races—Strains of blood in the first known trotters —The lesson of Maud S.—The genesis of trotting-horse literature—The simple study of inheritance—The different forms of heredity—The famous quagga story not sustained—Illustrations in dogs—Heredity of acquired characters and instincts—Development of successive generations necessary —Unequaled collections of statistics—Acquired injuries and unsoundness transmitted.

As preparatory to taking up the consideration of the breeding problem, it may be well to look back a little and see what had transpired in the trotting-horse world, leading up to the serious consideration of how he was bred. It has been generally accepted as true that there were no trotting contests in this country till about the second decade of the present century, but this impression has grown out of the fact that the newspapers, down to that period, failed to report such contests. It is historically true that pacing races were a common amusement among the people of different portions of the colonies nearly two hundred years ago. This is established by the legislative action of some of the colonies, in the first half of the last century, in suppressing all “pacing and trotting races.” It is well to note, in passing, that pacers and trotters of that early period were commingled, just as they are to-day, with the former the more prominent, and the more highly prized. Of that hundred years of silence we have no details and but few historical references that were contemporaneous with the events. Hence we are practically dependent upon the legislative action of the colonies to establish the truth beyond question.

When we reach the period when the newspapers began to report some of the more conspicuous and important trotting events about Philadelphia and New York, we find a condition of things for which we are hardly prepared. The pacer has lost his prominence and is but little in evidence, and all the best trotters seem to be descended from the imported horse Messenger. The best performers of that period were as follows:

Topgallant Paul Pry Dutchman Jersey Fagdown Commander (Bull) Gipsy Bull Calf Lady Warrenton Betsy Baker Sir Peter Screwdriver Chancellor Whalebone Lady Suffolk Andrew Jackson Fanny Pullen Washington Sally Miller Greenwich Maid Charlotte Temple Confidence Rattler Lady Salisbury Modesty

These were all descended from Messenger, and with the exception of Edwin Forrest and one or two others, believed to be descended from pacing blood, they were the leading performers of their day. All of the above animals were not equally strong in Messenger blood as three of them were by sons and out of daughters of Messenger, five were by sons of Messenger, and all the others had more or less of his blood. More than eighty years ago the descendants of Messenger, wherever known, were recognized as a family of trotters and this broad fact became a kind of universal belief among horsemen. This belief, being founded on a truth, was all right, but a plausible deduction from it, which was not a truth, inflicted a terrible penalty upon the pockets of otherwise intelligent men for a period of more than fifty years before they discovered their error. The postulate was in this form: “Messenger was a thoroughbred horse and founded a great family of trotters, hence, any other thoroughbred horse, under the same conditions, would have accomplished the same results.” This “stock” form of the argument was plausible and it was in everybody’s mouth from one end of the land to the other. Every stable boy, every breeder, every editor believed the deduction was sound, and, I may as well own it, I believed it myself until I had gathered together all the accessible trotting statistics of this country and reduced them to order and method, so that they might be studied and their true teachings be drawn from them. As an illustration of the ignorant intolerance and dishonesty with which certain editors and their followers maintained, less than twenty years ago, that all that was of any value in the trotter was inherited from the runner, take the following: In the autumn of 1878 the famous Maud S., then four years old, came out and trotted a mile in 2:17½, which was then a world’s wonder. She was a pacer of the plastic type, but she had to wear toe-weights through all her brilliant career to keep her on her gait as a trotter. Everybody was astounded at this phenomenal performance and went wild over it as something that had never been done before, by a four-year-old, and probably never would be done again. On this performance I simply remarked, in the _Monthly_:

“Her trotting inheritance is very strong and well defined on both sides of the house, and she has a right to trot, and trot fast, and her 2:17½ shows that she trots instinctively, and without much training; and in this she is phenomenal. She is simply a little in advance of her time; for no truth is more fully sustained by analogy and reason than that, in a few generation of judicious selections, such mares will not be phenomenal.”

From this four-year-old record of 2:17½ in 1878, we pass on to the two-year-old record of 2:10¾ in 1891. A four-year-old now trotting in 2:17½ is only commonplace. It was not a gift of “prophecy” nor an overwrought enthusiasm, therefore, that enabled me to determine that 2:17½ for a four-year-old would become commonplace, but a study of the laws of breeding in the light of all past trotting experiences. When this performance was made the late B. G. Bruce, of Lexington, Kentucky, then editor of a sporting paper, went into ecstasies over it and was at once able to show, to his own mind, that it was all owing to the running blood in Maud S. that enabled her to show phenomenal speed. He figured this all out and showed that she possessed eleven-sixteenths of what he called “pure blood,” to five-sixteenths of what he called “cold blood.” In winding up his article, he says:

“In conclusion we deem it evident from her form and action that the great power of Maud S. comes from her pure blood; that her breeding back on the form and action, courage and endurance of the blood horse is the very reason why she is so superior to all four-year-olds that have ever appeared. And another point is obvious: the pure blood matures so much earlier than the cold blood that years are gained in development over the cold-blooded trotter.”

Now instead of Maud S. possessing eleven-sixteenths of “pure blood,” as claimed by Mr. Bruce, it has never been shown and never can be shown that she possessed one single drop of “pure blood.” When Sally Russell, the grandam of Maud S., was sold to Mr. R. A. Alexander, she was sold under a fraudulent pedigree, and when Pilot Jr. was sold to Mr. Alexander an utterly impossible pedigree was manufactured for him. In both cases he was the victim of sharpers, for in his life and character he stood away above all suspicion. The pedigrees of Pilot Jr. and Sally Russell have been fully considered in Chapter XXIX. of this volume.

After publishing “The American Stud Book” in 1867, and the first volume of the “Trotting Register” in 1871, and having carefully compiled all past trotting races and trotting experiences, up to the close of 1872, it began to dawn upon me that possibly I had been handling a great many fictions and thereby given them an indorsement to the world as truths. This “gave me pause,” as well as many a sleepless night and anxious day. The old adage, “What everybody says must be true,” gave me no comfort, for I had just found that Mr. “Everybody” was a great liar. Then a higher and purer maxim suggested itself to my mind, “One, with the truth on his side, is a majority,” and under this banner I enlisted for the war which I knew was coming. Having compiled the pedigrees of all running horses and all trotting horses, so far as known, up to 1870, and more especially having gathered up all past trotting experiences and statistics, I felt that I was equipped to enter the lists with everybody against me. I knew I was liable to meet antagonists on every side, and some of them of great ability, but at the same time I knew they had neither the armor of truth nor the weapons of facts at their command. Mere prejudices and the limping opinions that spring from them have no force in an earnest combat. The platform upon which I stood was aggressive, but simple and easily comprehended, viz., “The English horse Messenger, in his own right and by his own power, founded a family of trotters—something which no other English horse had ever been able to take the first step toward accomplishing.” This was the central point around which the battle raged, and to it I added the pacer as a subsidiary or minor source of speed, equally certain in fact, but not equally well defined in lines of descent, nor equally important in numbers and value. From these major and minor sources it is literally true that all our trotters have descended. In confirmation of this, a very capable and careful writer in the New York _Sun_, within the past few months, has said: “Hambletonian is the progenitor of ninety per cent. of the fast trotters now on the turf.” When we start with Hambletonian, the triple great-grandson of Messenger, we are safely within the period of records of both blood and performances, and we are relieved from some possible uncertainties in the earlier period of Messenger himself, hence the writer quoted above is at bed-rock in the sources of his information. This makes my major proposition so plain and so triumphantly sustained that it is doubtful whether there is now living an intelligent horseman who would even think of disputing it.

In the spring of 1872 I wrote a series of articles under the caption of “How shall we breed the Trotting Horse?” which was published in the _Spirit of the Times_ in February and March of that year. These papers were revised and enlarged and published, as an introductory treatise on breeding the trotter, in the second volume of the “American Trotting Register.” This treatise is the genesis of all discussions in which the laws governing the breeding of the trotter are considered. Up to that period contributions to the press on breeding subjects were generally transient and confined to the writer’s own experience. If he was trying to breed trotters a comparison of his material always corresponded with his arguments, and the only thing he demonstrated was his own inability to see over the fence surrounding his own paddocks. I love a man who loves his horse, and, as a man, I cannot dislike him because he thinks his horse is the very acme of all equine perfection, although he may be a worthless, brute; but when a man spends a whole lifetime in trying to breed trotters from blood that cannot trot, I lose all respect for his mental operations. The man who cannot widen out and take profit from the demonstrated experiences of the whole trotting world, had better turn his attention to some business suited to his capacity. Not a single thought advanced nor a position taken in the article referred to has ever been successfully controverted, although they excited much opposition. An attempt was made to laugh the phrase “trotting instinct” out of court, but that little phrase not only held the fortress, but became, as it were, the basis of the whole system of thought represented in the treatise. It had a meaning and a fitness in what it meant that put it in everybody’s mouth, and there it stays for all time. Instinct is “the sum of inherited habits;” and these five words express the best practical definition of its meaning that I have ever met with.

THE LAWS THAT GOVERN.—In all animal life the resemblance of the offspring to the parents is the universal law. The law is not only true in the physical conformation of the offspring, but it is also true in the mentality and instinctivity of the offspring. In former years it was very aptly termed the law of inheritance, but the more general usage is now the law of heredity. In casting about for a definition of this newly coined word, I have not been able to find anything more comprehensive and expressive than that given by Ribot, in the opening sentence of his work on this subject. He says:

“Heredity is that biological law by which all beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants; it is for the species what personal identity is for the individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid incessant variation; by it Nature ever copies and imitates herself.”

This has been the law ever since the command went forth, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind.” Hence sprang the varieties, species, genera and orders into which naturalists have sought to classify the animal kingdom. In generations long past our ancestors used such phrases as “Like father, like son,” “Trot father, trot mother, trot colt,” “Like begets like,” etc., meaning just what we mean to-day by the word “heredity.” While heredity is a universal law of animal life, it must be remembered that its results cannot be pre-determined by any rule of arithmetic. Every colt has a sire and a dam, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and then sixteen, and next thirty-two progenitors. Here we have five generations embracing sixty-two different animals, and the experiences of many years have gone to show that if these sixty-two animals are all purely bred in the breed which you are seeking to secure there is a reasonable certainty that your prospective colt will be a good representative of that breed. By this I mean that with this number of generations there is but little danger of your colt following some undesirable type outside of and beyond these five generations. The only way to study this problem intelligently and with satisfaction is to tabulate the pedigrees of the two animals you propose to couple and then study each individual of the different generations and see what each one has done in the direction you are breeding. If you are breeding for a Derby winner you want every one of the sixty-two to have proved himself or herself a first-class runner, and you don’t want a single drop of outside blood in any of them. If you are breeding for the two-minute trotter, you don’t want any blood but the fastest trotting blood. If you are breeding for the two-minute pacer you want nothing but the fastest pacing blood. But, possibly you may be breeding for size, style, and beauty, and in that case you must be particularly careful to have your tabulation full of animals possessing these qualifications. In times past many breeders have been led to their own hurt in making ill-considered attempts at improvement by mating animals of antagonistic instincts. The fast runner and the fast trotter have nothing in common between them in the way of gait. In physical structure there may be no antagonism that we can see, but in mental or psychical structure there is nothing but what is inharmonious. Each animal and each line of blood must be considered as it stands separate from the other, and the question must be not only asked but answered: “What has this line of blood done in its own right and by its own power?”

In studying these tabulations it certainly is not necessary to remind any thinking man of the comparative value of near and remote individuals. The first and second generations are the important factors in the character and value of the proposed colt, and, as a rule, the four grandparents are not given that weight in making up a sound judgment to which they are entitled. A tabulated pedigree may show a general equality or average goodness all over, in the direction we are looking; although it may embrace but few stars it is not a pedigree that should be hastily rejected. The student should never lose sight of the truth that bad qualities are just as certain to be transmitted as good ones. Bad feet, bad limbs, bad eyes and bad respiration should be sufficient cause for prompt rejection. Derangement or unhealthiness of the internal viscera or any of them is just as likely to be transmitted as an external malformation or disease.

In some instances the qualities sought seem to emanate entirely from the sire or the dam, and this prepotency seems to appear more frequently as the work of the sire than of the dam, perhaps because the opportunities are greater in the number of services. Thousands of stallions have failed to get trotters out of running-bred mares, but as many as you could count on the fingers of one hand, probably, have succeeded in a few instances. Of these Pilot Jr., Almont and Electioneer occur to me at this time as the most prominent. These horses, so far as we know the lines of their blood, were strictly trotting and pacing bred, with no tincture of running blood in their veins. On a certain occasion Senator Stanford wished to demonstrate to the writer that Electioneer could get trotters out of running-bred mares, and after showing the step of the famous Palo Alto, he remarked: “None of my other stallions can do that. Electioneer alone has the power to get trotters out of some thoroughbred mares, but not all.” This ability to get a trotter out of a running mare is the highest test to which the prepotency of a trotting sire can be put, as is shown by the very small number that have ever succeeded.

DIRECT HEREDITY.—While it is true that all inheritance must come through the parents, it is also true that phenomena of form, character and quality are not infrequently presented that the parents do not seem to possess, and upon looking further we find those phenomena in some of the more remote ancestors. When we find the character of the offspring a practical reproduction of one or both the parents, we designate this as a case of “direct heredity” merely for the convenience of description and elucidation. Ideal or perfect heredity never has been reached and never will be. There are two sources to the life of the new being, and each of these sources is made up of never-ending variations. There may seem to be a very complete coalescence of the elements of the sire and dam in the foal, but it is not like either of them and yet it may resemble both. A mere physical resemblance to a great sire is no evidence that the colt will be equally great. I have seen many of the sons of the great Hambletonian, and among them all the one that bore the strongest physical resemblance to him was of the least value, either as a performer or a progenitor. Hambletonian left many great sons behind him, some of them even greater than himself, and while they all possessed certain family characteristics, I cannot recall a single one that strikingly resembled him in his physical conformation. From this incident, as well as a thousand other similar ones, we cannot avoid the conclusion that heredity controls the whole animal, man or beast, in his mental as well as in his physical constitution.

CROSS HEREDITY is one of the forms of direct heredity, and is not very well exemplified in trotting experiences, nor very valuable in the lessons it is supposed to teach. In its first form it embraces instances where the character of the sire is transmitted to his daughters and the character of the dam is transmitted to her sons. Long ago I established a table in the “Year Book” to embrace the sires of mares that produced two or more animals in the 2:30 list, but had failed to place any representative there from their own loins. The development of this table simply showed an array of sires that were not able to get 2:30 trotters, but when their daughters were bred to horses of stronger inheritance, horses indeed that were able to get trotters from almost any kind of mares, they produced foals that came within the circle. This was a grandsire’s table and depended upon second causes, that is, the horses that gave it life occupied secondary positions in it, and it presented but little that was of value to the student of horse history. In the discussion of this particular form of heredity the books are filled up with instances of vicious fathers begetting vicious daughters and vicious mothers producing vicious sons, with more or less uncertainty as to the individual origin of the parties in question.

INDIRECT AND COLLATERAL HEREDITY.—When a child or a colt does not resemble its parents, but “takes after” the grandfather or some more remote ancestor, it is said to be a case of atavism, or indirect or collateral heredity. Twenty years ago I visited, by appointment, a branch of my family at the old homestead of my great-grandfather, on the maternal side. There never had been any knowledge of each other or intercourse between these two branches of the family. On arriving at my destination I was warmly greeted by a gentleman who came forward from the crowd and named me. As there were a good number of people alighting from the train at the same time I asked my cousin how he knew me, and he replied that I bore such a striking resemblance to my grandfather that at a single glance he could have picked me out of a hundred men. This grandfather was the father of my mother and he died when I was a small boy. But there was a still greater surprise awaiting me. My kinsman was an intelligent man of excellent sense, and during the few days I spent in his family he was to me a most interesting study. In a hundred ways he reminded me of my brother, not in resemblance of face, for there was, practically, no resemblance; but in the action of his mind, in his way of putting things, and especially in his unstudied and peculiar gestures of his hands in conversation, the one seemed to be a perfect reproduction of the other. They were both born and reared on farms, they were both heads of families, and they were both elders in the Presbyterian church. The one was the third and the other the fourth remove from their common progenitor. I have read carefully descriptions of many cases of mental heredity, but this case, coming under my own observation and deliberate study, seemed to be more thoroughly convincing than any or all others.

The fact that certain qualities may lie dormant through several generations and then be unexpectedly developed was well known to the ancients more than two thousand years ago. Plutarch mentions a Greek woman who gave birth to a negro child and was brought to trial for adultery, but it was discovered that she was descended in the fourth degree from an Ethiopian. Montaigne expresses his astonishment at this, and remarks:

“Is it not marvelous that this drop of seed from which we are produced should bear the impression, not only of the bodily form, but even the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers? Where does this drop of water keep its infinite number of forms? How does it bear these likenesses through a progress so haphazard and so irregular that the great-grandson shall resemble the great-grandfather, the nephew the uncle?”

The most prolific and satisfactory sources of evidence in support of indirect or reversionary heredity are to be found in the crosses between the white and the black races. They abound in all quarters wherever the two races are to be found, and many a proud family has been humbled to the dust when the long-concealed “black drop” makes its unexpected appearance. There are hundreds of such cases in the world, and it is impossible to make even an approximation of the number of generations that would be required to wash out the stain.

HEREDITY OF INFLUENCE.—When the subject of “How to Breed the Trotting Horse” was in its infancy there was a wonderful amount of mystery about it. Nobody could understand why one horse of the same general conformation should not trot just as fast as another. When it was found that this way of looking at the problem would not meet the facts, one thought it was owing to the length of certain bones, another that it was all in the hind quarters, another that it was “the trotting pitch,” another that it was “a happy nick,” etc. When it was all made plain that a horse was able to trot fast because his ancestors were able to trot fast, the seekers for the mysterious had nothing left that suited their taste but the effects of first impregnations, resting on Lord Morton’s story of the quagga and the mare, which is here dignified with the title “Heredity of Influence.” Now, just how “influence,” two or three years after the event, should become a controlling factor in the paternity of a colt, is a mystery sufficiently profound to satisfy our friends of earlier years, so intent upon finding something mysterious. For about three-quarters of a century the story, coming from so reputable a source, has been cited in many scientific bodies and accepted by many scientific men and writers without a question or doubt. No writer, so far as I know, has ever attempted to controvert it, and if the facts be well founded it demolishes in its conclusions all the laws of generation, to say nothing of the universal law of heredity. The point to be considered is, whether the first impregnation influences the offspring of subsequent and different impregnations. In other words, whether the children of a widow by her second husband will partake of the characteristics of her first husband. Ribot says “that from the psychological point of view, we are skeptical in regard to this form of heredity. The fact seems to be perfectly out of the order of things.” He then goes on to consider it as though it might be true, and cites any number of the veriest fables in support of it, without ever stopping to inquire whether they have any foundation of truth. In every assemblage of breeders brought together for the purpose of discussing how best to breed and rear our domestic animals at a profit, there is always somebody to bring in the everlasting story of the mare and the quagga, not because it may have any relevancy to the subject, but it is an opportunity not to be lost to show one’s learning. As this story has served the purpose of showing off the learning of so many thousands who never saw it, I will here give it in its original and official form. A communication from the Earl of Morton was read before the Royal Society of London, November 23, 1820, and published in “Philosophical Transactions” for 1821, p. 20, and is as follows:

“I yesterday had an opportunity of observing a singular fact in natural history, which you may, perhaps, deem not unworthy of being communicated to the Royal Society.

“Some years ago I was desirous of trying the experiment of domesticating the quagga, and endeavored to procure some individuals of that species. I obtained a male; but being disappointed of a female, I tried to breed from the male quagga and a young chestnut mare of seven-eighths Arabian blood, and which had never been bred from; the result was the production of a female hybrid, now five years old, and bearing both in her form and in her color very decided indications of her mixed origin. I subsequently parted with the seven-eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore Ousley, who has bred from her, by a very fine black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning examined the produce, namely, a two-year-old filly and a year-old colt. They have the character of the Arabian breed as decidedly as can be expected, where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian; and they are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their color and in the hair of their manes they have a striking resemblance to the quagga. Their color is bay, marked more or less like the quagga, in a darker tint. Both are distinguished by the dark line along the ridge of the back, the dark stripes across the forehand, and the dark bars across the back part of the legs. The stripes across the forehand of the colt are confined to the withers, and the part of the neck next to them. Those on the filly cover nearly the whole of the neck and the back as far as the flanks. The color of her coat on the neck adjoining the mane is pale, and approaching a dun, rendering the stripes there more conspicuous than those on the colt. The same pale tint appears in a less degree on the rump; and in this circumstance of the dun tint also she resembles the quagga.

“The colt and filly were taken up from grass for my inspection, and owing to the present state of their coats I could not ascertain whether they bear any indications of spots on the rump, the dark pasterns, or the narrow strips on the forehead, with which the quagga is marked. They have no appearance of the dark lines along the belly or the white tufts on the side of the mane. Both their manes are black; that of the filly is short and stiff, and stands upright; and Sir Gore Ousley’s stud groom alleged it never was otherwise; that of the colt is long, but so stiff as to arch upward, and to hang clear of the side of the neck, in which circumstance it resembles that of a hybrid. This is the more remarkable, as the mane of the Arabian breed hangs lank and closer to the neck than those of most others. The bars across the legs, both of the hybrid and of the colt and filly, are more strongly defined and darker than those on the legs of the quagga, which are very slightly marked; and though the hybrid has several quagga marks which the colt and filly have not, yet the most striking, namely, the stripes on the forehand, are fewer and less apparent than those on the colt and filly. These circumstances may appear singular, but I think you will agree with me that they are trifles compared with the extraordinary fact of so many striking features which do not belong to the dam, being in two successive instances communicated through her to the progeny not only of another sire, who also had them not, but to a sire probably of another species; for such we have very strong reasons for supposing the quagga to be”

This is Lord Morton’s original quagga story without abridgement, the substance of which has been quoted and printed millions of times, but I never have seen anything like an analysis of it, either for or against its value as determining any fact or principle in breeding. The elements are: a young chestnut mare, “seven-eighths Arabian blood,” was bred to a quagga and produced a hybrid. She was afterward bred to a black “Arabian” and produced a colt and a filly that were supposed to be marked like the quagga; hence, first impregnations influence all subsequent foals; and hence “the heredity of influence,” as called by some scientists. Lord Morton has given an intelligent and, no doubt, faithful description of the colt and the filly that came out of the mare that had previously produced the hybrid quagga; but he has failed to show that none of the near-by ancestors of the sire and dam of this colt and filly were of a dun color and were marked just as the colt and filly were marked. Until it is shown that the peculiar markings of this colt and filly could not have been inherited from their natural ancestors, the half-formed theory that they were the result of the coupling with the quagga, years before, wholly fails to satisfy the human understanding. When Lord Morton tells us that the dam was seven-eighths, and the sire full Arabian, he seems to think he has covered that point; but he has not, for he has not shown that there was a single drop of Arabian blood in either of them. It must not be forgotten that at the period here referred to all Eastern and Southern horses were called Arabians, when not one in fifty of them ever saw Arabia either through his own eyes or through the eyes of any of his ancestors. The composite material out of which the English race horse was built up was of all colors, including the dun, with the dark stripe on his back, the short stripes or patches on his shoulders, and the transverse bars on his legs. A horse of this color, I am told, once won the Derby. The Kattywar horses of Northwestern India, Mr. Darwin informs us, are from fifteen to sixteen hands high, of all colors, with the several shades of dun the most common, and when one of them fails of having the spinal stripe, the shoulder stripes, and the leg stripes the purity of his breeding is doubted. This is the type of horse the British officers ride, and when their term of service expires sometimes bring home with them. There are many duns in Persia and in Eastern Asia Minor, I am informed, and the stripes seem to belong to the color. In Norway the color of the native horse is dun and the stripes are considered evidence of pure breeding. Many of the mountain horses of Spain are duns, with the stripes. The dun color prevailed, to a greater or less extent, among the native English horses of three hundred years ago, and some of them were brought to this country in the early colonial period. Mr. Darwin, in his “Animals and Plants under Domestication,” fully describes the dun horses of Devonshire, and in order to be clearly understood he figures one of them showing the dark stripes on the shoulder and the transverse bars upon the legs. I have seen numbers of dun horses so marked, in this country, the most conspicuous that I can now recall being Wapsie, the distinguished son of Green’s Bashaw. The fact that horses of this color and marking are to be found in all parts of the globe, has led many thoughtful writers to the conclusion that these characteristics are among the very earliest in the history of the horse. To bring this instance to a close, I must say:

1. Beyond the color alone of the sire and dam of this colt and filly, there is no evidence whatever that they might not have inherited, by ordinary generation, the color and markings from some of their ancestors.

2. The miscegenous breeding of the ass upon the mare has been practiced, we know, for more than three thousand years, and yet in all that time, and down to our own day and experiences, there has been no established indication that the first impregnation of the filly by the ass had any influence whatever upon her subsequent produce by the horse.

This theory of the first impregnation having an influence on all subsequent produce is probably more generally maintained among dog fanciers than any other class of breeders. In some instances when a valuable maiden bitch gets astray she is banished from the kennel and either destroyed or given away. For this foolish notion some antique authority might be cited. Burdach, a French writer on physiology, says:

“If a bitch be once put to a dog of another race, every litter of puppies afterward will include one belonging to that other breed, except the first time she be put only to dogs of her own breed.”

This is a kind of pseudo science that is only calculated to mislead, for the vital facts are omitted. What was the pedigree of the bitch? She may have looked like a well-bred pointer and a high price may have been paid for her, but her sire may have been a mongrel, or, possibly, a miserable cur. No dog breeder or dog dealer has ever been known to drown the results of a _mésalliance_ if it was a fairly good-looking puppy. It goes into the records as a thoroughbred and finds a market. When a dog and a bitch, seeming to be well-bred and costing a high price, bring into the world a litter of puppies showing a mixed inheritance, the fancier at once jumps to the conclusion that there is something mysterious about it, and as he has heard of the evil results of first impregnations, he thinks he has discovered the source of the trouble and straightway this is another example resulting from first impregnation. He then goes back on the dealer, or possibly the breeder, and there to conceal the fact that the blood of his kennel was not pure, he would naturally play the rogue and admit that the young bitch might have got astray. This satisfies the unsophisticated owner, and another trick of an unscrupulous “dog jockey” goes on record as a case of “heredity of influence,” when in fact it was nothing more nor less than a dirty fraud in the breeding of the dog or bitch, or both.

Some of the early French writers on scientific subjects, as Burdach, Michelet, etc., advanced the theory more than a hundred years ago that the children of a second marriage, in some cases, inherited the resemblance and character of the first husband. In the nature of things this theory could have but very feeble support and that chiefly among scandalmongers. In connection with this phase of “heredity of influence” I will give a little instance of my personal experience. Twenty years ago, or more, I was making an address before an association, in a New England city, on the subject of “How to Breed the Trotting Horse.” The audience was very large and composed exclusively of gentlemen. At the opening it was announced that at the close of each specific topic an opportunity would be given to any one in the audience to ask questions on the thoughts presented. The signal had hardly been given when a gentleman arose in the audience and raised the question whether I had not omitted an important fact in heredity? He then went on to rehearse the everlasting quagga story, with a most confident flourish of his learning and a sure grasp on a triumph.

“The quagga story,” I remarked, “is well known to everybody, but there are some facts about it that are not known to anybody. The mare herself may have been from a dun tribe of horses, or the horse to which she was afterward bred may have been from such a tribe, hundreds of which have stripes on the back, the shoulders and the legs, and thus the stripes might be accounted for by indirect heredity; not because the quagga had stripes, but because the dun horse ancestry had stripes. Most people, probably, look upon it as a freak of nature, and as the case has never duplicated itself, in all the years before or since, it fails to be a practical question, and in our personal experiences as breeders, we need not be afraid of suffering harm from it.”

“Your explanation,” replied my interlocutor, “fails to cover the case, I think, for I have seen, with my own eyes, instances of it in the human family and I will relate one. A dozen years ago, or more, a friend of mine married a lady who was a brunette in complexion, with black eyes and black hair. He was of florid complexion, with blue eyes and sandy hair, just about the color of my own. After three or four years the husband died leaving two children of his own complexion and color of eyes and hair. In course of time the widow married a man with black hair and black eyes, and there came a second set of children that were as perfect reproductions of the first husband as his own children were in complexion and color of hair.”

“How long have you personally known this family, and have you ever seen these two sets of children?”

“I have known the family intimately ever since the first marriage and I have seen both sets of children very often.”

“You certainly have had abundant opportunity to know whereof you affirm, and the facts seem so plain that it would be a refinement on folly to undertake to contradict them; but there is one element in this case that has not been explained, and it is a vital one. How are we to know whether some man of ‘sandy complexion’ and with ‘hair and eyes just the color of yours,’ is not the father of this second set of children?”

This ended the colloquy in a “roof-raising” shout, and I never have been called upon since, in a public meeting, to even allude to the “heredity of influence.” With the experiences of thousands of years of miscegnatious breeding between the ass and the mare and no indication among the writers of the ancients as to the evil and abiding effects of first impregnations; and with the experiences of more than a century in this country, with the same results, we are compelled to throw over all claims of this kind until furnished with full and complete pedigrees of the sire and dam, showing the color and markings of each individual for a number of generations.

HEREDITY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND INSTINCTS.—On this point there is a lack of unanimity among the promoters of the “primordial germ” theory, and the principal advocate of the negative side of this question appears to be Professor Weismann. Mere opinions of men, no difference how profound their learning, cannot be of any value, unless they are sustained by actual experiences, on questions of this kind. To determine this matter we are not dependent upon any of the explanations of the central Darwinian hypothesis of creation without a Creator, for we have all around us, safely within the historic period of human observation and experience, mountains of evidence, so to speak, heaped upon us, going to show that “acquired character and instincts” are transmitted and become hereditary.

Dr. Pritchard, in his “Natural History of Man,” gives the following illustration on this point:

“Two other very important observations made by M. Roulin, in South America, were pointed out by M. Geoffrey St. Hillaire, in his report to the Academy of Sciences. They refer to the fact of the hereditary transmission of habits originally impressed with care and art upon the ancestors. Of this fact I will adduce other examples in the sequel; at present I only advert to M. Roulin’s observations. The horses bred on the grazing farms of the table-lands of the Cordillera are carefully taught a peculiar pace, which is a sort of running amble. This is not their natural mode of progression, but they are inured to it very early, and the greatest pains are taken to prevent them from moving in any other gait; in this way the acquired habit becomes a second nature. It happens occasionally that such horses becoming lame, or no longer fit for use, it is then customary to let them loose, if they happen to be well grown stallions, into the pasture grounds. It is constantly observed that these horses become the sires of a race to which the ambling pace is natural, and which requires no teaching. The fact is so well known that such colts have received a particular name; they are termed ‘aguilillas.’”

The fact that there were some pacers in South America came to me from many sources, and especially from gentlemen of intelligence and character who had spent years in that country, and was for a long time a puzzle to me. All the evidences of history went to show that the horse stock of South America was Spanish, and no evidence could be found that the Spanish horse was a pacer, or that there was any tendency to pace in the blood of the Spanish horse. This report to the French Academy of Sciences was made in the early part of this century and is really the first information I have ever had of Spanish horses pacing. Dr. Pritchard was one of the earlier modern writers on natural history and stands very high as a man of conscience as well as learning. The surprising feature in this South American experience is the wide and, apparently, immediate measure of success that seems to have followed the training to the pacing gait in its transmission. It may be taken as a rule that the changing of the gait from the diagonal to the lateral, or _vice versa_, is a slow process, and it seems to me that with few exceptions it would require several generations before the new habit of action would become fixed in the breed. It is just possible, however, that there may have been a tincture of pacing blood in the Spanish horses of the sixteenth century. The Visigoths, one of the early Asiatic hordes that overran Europe, first settled in Scandinavia, and the southern part of Sweden is still called “Gothland.” After a long stay in that country they became dissatisfied with soil and climate and determined to seek another. According to the historians, they first migrated in a southeastward direction and from there in a southwestward till they reached the southern part of France, from which they soon passed over into Spain, which they subdued, and established there a dynasty which lasted two hundred years. In A.D. 711 the Saracens from Africa crossed over, and after a very bloody battle lasting two days, defeated Rhoderic, the last of the dynasty, and cut his army to pieces. In Scandinavia, and especially in Norway and Sweden, we find plenty of dun horses that are pacers, and they are recognized as a very old breed. In the mountains of Spain we also find small dun horses, and it is, perhaps, not an unreasonable possibility that the Visigoths may have carried some of their horse stock with them in their migration from the North to the South of Europe, and thus this habit of action that may have remained for centuries latent in the breed may have been unusually plastic in its restoration. This, however, is a mere surmise as to a possibility and cannot displace the historic observations reported by M. Roulin and presented before the French Academy. The gait of the South American pacers, as I understand it, is not that of the pure pace, with two strokes completing the revolution, but is more like the “saddle gaits” that we find in the West and Southwest of our own country. The true pace seems to be exceptional, because that is not a saddle gait. It is a fact often observed in this country that foals from parents trained to the saddle gaits will take to those gaits naturally and as soon as they are dropped. In a preceding part of this work I have given some consideration to the fact that three or four hundred years ago the horses of our English ancestors were largely pacers, and to the methods adopted in that day for changing the action from the diagonal to the lateral gait—the hopples, rattles, weights, etc. The descendants of those horses, brought to this country by the colonists, as will be seen at another place, were nearly all pacers.

The following letter, addressed by Dr. William Huggins to Charles Darwin and by him published in “Nature” twenty years ago, very strongly illustrates the heredity of instincts, and as it is authentic and true beyond question I will here insert it. Dr. Huggins says:

“I wish to communicate to you a curious case of mental peculiarity. I possess an English mastiff, by name Kepler, a son of the celebrated Turk out of Venus. I brought the dog, when six weeks old, from the stable in which he was born. The first time I took him out he started back in alarm at the first butcher’s shop he had ever seen. I soon found he had a violent antipathy to butchers and butchers’ shops. When six months old a servant took him with her on an errand. At a short distance before coming to the house she had to pass a butcher’s shop; the dog threw himself down (being led by a string), and neither coaxing nor threats would make him pass the shop. The dog was too heavy to be carried, and as a crowd collected, the servant had to return with the dog more than a mile, and then go without him. This occurred about two years ago. The antipathy still continues, but the dog will pass nearer to a shop than he formerly would. About two months ago, in a little book on dogs, published by Dean, I discovered that the same strange antipathy is shown in the father, Turk. I then wrote to Mr. Nichols, the former owner of Turk, to ask him for any information he might have on the point. He replied: ‘I can say that the same antipathy exists in King, the sire of Turk, in Turk, in Punch (son of Turk), out of Meg, and in Paris (son of Turk out of Juno). Paris has the greatest antipathy, as he would hardly go into a street where a butcher’s shop is, and would run away after passing it. When a cart with a butcher’s man came into the place where the dogs were kept, although they could not see him, they all were ready to break their chains. A master butcher, dressed privately, called one evening on Paris’ master to see the dog. He had hardly entered the house before the dog (though shut in) was so much excited that he had to be put into a shed, and the butcher was forced to leave before seeing the dog. The same dog, at Hastings, made a spring at a gentleman who came into the hotel. The owner caught the dog and apologized, and said he never knew him to do so before, except when a butcher came to his house. The gentleman at once said that was his business. So you see that they inherited these antipathies, and show a great deal of breed.’”

Some ancestor, not far removed, of these three generations of dogs must have suffered a life of oppression and cruelty at the hands of an unfeeling master, and that master must have been a butcher. We fail to understand and appreciate the mentality of the dog and the horse, and as they are above the average of the brute creation we fail of a word midway between instinct and reason to express that mentality. We call it “instinct,” and correctly, too, but this grade of instinct requires a more expressive word to represent it. That a feeling of antipathy should have been so deeply seated in the nature and life of a dog that the resentment and hatred should have been transmitted to his descendants for three generations in succession is a very remarkable instance of the heredity of instinct. As a companion piece to the foregoing and as showing the difference between the hatred of one dog and the gratitude and love of another, I will relate an instance that came under my own observation and knowledge more than forty years ago. General John G. Gordon was a merchant in Muscatine, Iowa, and Dr. George Reeder was a physician of great skill and very large practice. These two gentlemen were among my most intimate personal friends. On a certain occasion one of Gordon’s well-to-do farmer customers brought him a puppy a few months old as a present. He had no use for a dog and didn’t want one, but he was not willing to forfeit either the good wishes or the custom of his farmer friend, so he accepted the gift with thanks. When he took the puppy home in the evening there was consternation in the household, and in a family conference it was decided that he should not be allowed to run through the house with his dirty feet, and thereupon he was consigned to the cow stable, and that became his home as long as he lived. Every night and morning he got a liberal ration of milk fresh from the cow and they soon became inseparable friends. In cold nights, as if by mutual agreement, he always slept cuddled up close to the cow. At that time in the history of the town, the country was open and pasture abundant in every direction, and everybody kept a cow. In the mornings these cows would start out to their grazing grounds, in bands, radiating in every direction, and in the evenings could be seen “the lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea.” Gordon’s dog never missed a day for years in going with his friend the cow and returning with her in the evening.

Dr. Reeder used two or three horses in his practice, and his stable was on the same alley, and some ten or twelve rods distant from Gordon’s cow stable. One day in winter time he was having his bins filled with corn in the ear, and to make room for it all he had to fill up a large dry-goods box that stood in one corner of the stable. While he was supervising the delivery of the corn Gordon’s dog came in, reared up on his hind legs, seized an ear of corn and made off with it. The doctor was very much surprised at this act of the dog as he never had seen or heard of a dog eating corn. While he was thinking about this strange act of the dog, he came back again and seized another ear and made off with it. This time the doctor watched him, and he carried it direct to his friend the cow, dropped it before her, and she soon made away with it. This phenomenal exhibition of the attachment of one animal to another of entirely different nature aroused the doctor’s desire for a further confirmation of what he had seen. Concealing himself behind the door he awaited further developments and in a little while the dog came back, seized the third ear, and whipping past some other cows, carried it safely to his friend. I have seen this dog a hundred times, and he was a mongrel nondescript, about the size of the average pointer, with nothing remarkable about his appearance; but in all the illustrations of all the naturalists I have not met with any authenticated instance where character in a dumb animal was so beautifully exhibited. In history we have many touching examples of the attachment of the dog to his master and of his heroism in defending the weak against the strong, but this case seems to be unique. Here is a character developed that is far more than “the sum of inherited habits.” We may call it instinct, but that word fails to express it. In whatever light we view this character, it has in it an element of reason and we have no word that expresses it.

The oldest written evidence we have of the origin of the setter dog dates back about two hundred years, in which we find John Harris agreeing to teach Henry Herbert’s “spaniel bitch Quand” to set game. Allusions are made in the old writers to dogs used for this purpose long before, but the setter certainly has an ancestry dating back at least two hundred years. The pointer is of much more recent origin and seems to have come from an ancestry wholly distinct from that of the setter, and yet, in the field, it would be very difficult for the most competent jury to decide which stands to his game with the greater steadiness. It is agreed, I think, among experienced sportsmen and breeders that the best dogs are the result of couplings made in the midst of the hunting season when the instincts of the parents are aroused and active under the gun. Puppies so bred are already half-trained when they are whelped. The instinct to point the game instead of rushing upon it is an instinct acquired at an earlier or later date, well within the historic period, and we know that it is transmitted and inherited under the laws of heredity. We know also that this instinct is strengthened and improved by training and use; and at the same time it is weakened, if not obliterated, by neglect and non-use for a few generations.

The Scotch collie, with plenty to do, is altogether the most useful, and hence, in a utilitarian sense, the most valuable of all the varieties of the canine race. In understanding his master’s commands and the motions of his hand in the management of the flock, he evinces an intelligence, an instinct, that is almost human. There is a marked distinction between the instinct of the pointer and the collie. The former acts chiefly by his innate mental endowments, while the latter is at his best when carrying out the will of his master. In both cases the instinct was acquired in comparatively recent years, and it is now fixed in the breeds and is transmitted with great certainty.

The most remarkable results in the development and use of an instinct that was practically latent, or never developed, are to be found in the history of the American Trotting Horse. Fifty-one years ago Lady Suffolk was the first trotter to cover the mile in 2:29½. Four years later Pelham, a converted pacer, trotted in 2:28, and four years still later Highland Maid, a converted pacer, trotted in 2:27. In 1859 Flora Temple trotted in 2:19¾; in 1874 Goldsmith Maid trotted in 2:14; in 1885 Maud S. trotted in 2:08¾; in 1892 Nancy Hanks trotted in 2:04; and in 1894 Alix trotted in 2:03¾. But a greater performance than any of these was that of the two-year-old colt, Arion, when in 1891 he covered the mile in 2:10¾. I have no hesitation in pronouncing this the greatest performance ever made, to this date, not because it was the fastest, as shown by the watch, but because it was made by a two-year-old, and from this fact there had been no time for prolonged and skillful training. He was essentially the product of heredity and not the result of education.

Fifty-one years ago there was but one animal in the 2:30 list, and at the close of 1896 there were over fifteen thousand within that limit and far more than fifteen thousand others hovering on its border. This astounding result must be attributed primarily to a trotting inheritance, but this inheritance has been constantly strengthened, reinforced, fortified by the acquired capacities resulting from the development of the trotting speed of succeeding generations. This is not a mere estimate of what has resulted from acquired characters and instincts, for if we put all the observations of all the writers on subjects of natural history, large and small, together, they make but a meager and unsatisfactory showing when compared with the fifteen thousand actual experiences, officially noted and recorded on the spot and printed in “Wallace’s Year Book.” In all the world there is no other collection of statistics so vast, so accurate and so valuable as is there to be found, touching the question we are considering.

While the heredity of acquired characters and instincts is thus clearly and fully established, there is another truth intimately connected with it that should not be forgotten. In an inheritance springing from recent acquisitions there seems to be less of adhesive strength than in one that has come down through many generations. This being true, it follows that whether the lines of inheritance be long or short there must be an intelligent and constant exercise of good judgment in strengthening them by bringing the best and strongest together and uniting them in the prospective foal. When this has been done it is possible that the foal may not be of much value, but the chances of success are in exact proportion to the strength of all the lines of inheritance that are united in the foal. Beyond the chance of failure and beyond the average chance of an average production, there is a chance for something better than any of the ancestors. This latter hope always has been and always will be the inspiration of the breeder. In his structure and form he may be an improvement on his parents, but his value as a trotter can only be determined by the development of his instincts and speed as a trotter. Without such development he may transmit what he inherits, but he adds nothing to his inheritance except by the development of his own powers. These accretions, growing out of the development of succeeding generations, are the material cause that has placed the American Trotter at the very edge of two minutes to the mile, and with wise management will eventually carry him away beyond that rate of speed. This whole topic may be summed up in a single sentence: every acquisition of eminence and superiority adds something to the value of what is transmitted.

HEREDITY OF BAD QUALITIES, UNSOUNDNESS, ETC.—Under the laws of inheritance no distinction can be made between the desirable and the undesirable, nor between the earlier or later acquisitions, as they are all liable to be transmitted and to become hereditary. The bitter must go with the sweet. Dropping below is just as liable to occur as rising above what might be considered the average inheritance of the immediate parents. This may result from following or throwing back to some undesirable or unsound cross that may exist in some of the lines of inheritance which possibly may be distant several generations. As a practical consideration it makes but little difference whether a tendency to, or a fully developed, unsoundness has been in the inheritance for generations, or whether it may be the result of some recent accident or injury, it is liable to be transmitted. It is known to everybody that the great running horse Lexington was blind, and it was urged that his blindness was not congenital, but the result of an accident; hence it was argued by those interested that it would not be unsafe to breed to him. It was stated and repeated a hundred times that while in training he got loose in his stable and stuffed himself at the oats bin, and without knowing this his trainer took him out next morning and ran him a trial of four miles, from the effects of which he lost his sight. Without giving full credence to this as the cause of his blindness, it is nevertheless true that he filled the country with blind horses. If, for example, a joint or a ligament or a muscle of the hind leg be sprained by overexertion or by a misstep, a spavin or a curb may develop, or possibly something still worse, and this is a blemish and generally an unsoundness that is likely to be transmitted, if not in a developed form, then in an unmistakable tendency in that direction, which, in turn, will make its appearance in succeeding generations. The horse world, and I might say, the whole animal kingdom under domestication, abounds in examples, seen and unseen, of unsoundness originating in injuries to the parents.